


Millenimorphs 2: The Salvage

by dragonmorph



Series: Millenimorphs [2]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Reboot, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Homelessness, Trans Character, Transmasc!Tobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 21,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24848491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonmorph/pseuds/dragonmorph
Summary: My name is Tobias.My last name doesn't matter. It didn't matter long before I became a red-tailed hawk.
Relationships: Rachel/Tobias (eventually), background Jake/Cassie
Series: Millenimorphs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797580
Comments: 113
Kudos: 35
Collections: Summer Solstice Swap





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [c_rowles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/c_rowles/gifts).



> Catie, a million thanks for giving me the opportunity to continue my dream of writing this entire series. And thanks to Ted and Gray for being the best Animorphs buddies a person could ask for. <3
> 
> (Oh also you can listen to our [Animorphs podcast](https://www.animorphology.com) if you want)

My name is Tobias.

My last name doesn’t matter. It hasn’t mattered in a long time. There aren’t even that many people who’ve known my first name, in recent years: a few doctors at the mobile clinic, maybe. Some guys I used to hang out with sometimes in a sheltered lot in the warehouse district. A few staff members at the shelters in town—not that I used to go to shelters a lot. I’ve always liked it better when the open sky was above me. Which works out pretty well, now.

I guess I could put Jake on the list of people who knew my name back then. His office was next to the construction site where I used to spend my days, and he used to walk by me on his way to work, freshly showered and shaved in his collared button-down. He asked my name once early on, and after that he used to smile and say hi when he passed. Not a big deal, but you’d be surprised how few people do that, when you’re sitting in scruffy clothes by the side of the road.

I think maybe that’s how it all started. If Jake hadn’t taken the time to talk to me, I might not have followed that night when he and his friends were crossing through the construction site, and I wouldn’t have seen the thing that changed my life.

Or maybe I’m lying to myself. It probably would have happened either way. There’s not a lot to distract you when you’re sitting outside for most of the day, and I used to do a lot of staring at the sky. I probably would have gone to investigate anyway, when I’d seen the spaceship.

That spaceship was what changed life for the four of us—for me, Jake, Jake’s best friend Marco, and Jake’s cousin Rachel. It landed in the construction site, and we met the dying alien named Elfangor who called himself an Andalite and told us that the Yeerks were here. Yeerks: slug-like aliens who crawl into your ear, spread out inside your brain, and take over your life. The Andalites had been fighting them in space, but they had lost, and the Yeerks were here on Earth. They had already taken over a lot of humans and were planning to take us all.

I know. This sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory. I don’t have a lot of credibility when it comes to things like that, living the way I do. Usually I don’t mind. It can be easier, not having anyone take you too seriously.

But now I want you take me seriously. I would love to lump the Yeerks in with the fake alien stories I’ve read about over the years—the doctored tabloid photos, or stupid Area 51 memes. But the four of us were there, and we saw them. Their Bug Fighters landed alongside the Andalite’s ship, and they poured out in their stolen alien bodies: the huge bladed Hork-Bajir, the long snakelike Taxxons, like something out of a nightmare. And we saw humans, too. Controllers, just like the Hork-Bajir and Taxxons, slaves to the Yeerks in their brains.

Then the Blade ship landed, carrying the leader of the military invasion of Earth, Visser Three. The only Yeerk ever to take an Andalite body. We watched as Visser Three transformed into a horrible alien monster, picked Elfangor up, and ate him whole.

I still see it every time I close my eyes to sleep. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

It would have been nice to think that those were the only Yeerks on Earth. But later the group of us went down to the Yeerk pool, the secret cavern they’ve built beneath the city, and saw Yeerks by the hundreds. Maybe the thousands. We heard the screams of the involuntary hosts, and we tried to save some of them, but we failed.

We did manage to escape with our lives, though. See, Elfangor didn’t just give us the warning about the Yeerks. He also gave us a tool to fight them: the power to morph. The power to absorb the DNA of any animal we can touch and then turn into that animal.

It’s an amazing power. Mind-bending. It means that we can draw on all the resources of Earth in the fight against the Yeerks: the huge predators, the tiny insects, the fish in the sea, the birds in the skies. We can use them all to disguise ourselves and strike blows against the Yeerks.

Marco calls us the Animorphs. The five of us—Rachel, Jake, Marco, and I, along with Elfangor’s younger brother, Ax—went into the Yeerk pool in morph. We rescued Jake’s wife, Cassie, and destroyed evidence that might have betrayed our identities to the Yeerks. And we got out alive.

But not unchanged. That’s another thing about the power to morph: it has limits. You can only do it for two hours at a time. After that, you have to demorph to your own body, or you’ll be stuck. You’ll become what the Andalites call a _nothlit_ , a person trapped in morph.

Most of the Animorphs got out of the Yeerk pool within the two-hour time limit. But I wasn’t with them as they raced up the stairs. I was caught in the air above the main part of the cavern, trying not to get hit with the fireballs Visser Three was throwing—because Visser Three, unlike any other Yeerk, has an Andalite body, and that means he, too, has the power to morph. He morphed a giant fire-breathing monster, and in the chaos, I was separated from the others.

I think they wanted to wait for me. Rachel told me they did, anyway. But they didn’t have a choice. And it wasn’t the tragedy it would have been for any of them. I’m not being self-pitying, saying that; it’s just true. They all had homes, jobs, families who would notice they were gone. I didn’t have any of that. I didn’t even have a human body that felt like mine, most days. If one of us had to fall behind, it was right that it be me.

I had morphed a red-tailed hawk to get into the Yeerk pool. When the others escaped, I managed to hide in an air shaft that I hoped would lead me to the surface. But it was blocked at the end. By the time the others found me, it was too late: it had been over two hours, and I was still a red-tailed hawk.

I will always be a red-tailed hawk.


	2. Chapter 2

That day, I circled high over the city, banking expertly on the thermals. That’s one of the great things about morphing: you get the animal’s instincts along with its body. I had only been a red-tailed hawk for a few days, but I flew like I’d been flying my whole life.

I was supposed to be going to meet the others. We were meeting at six. According to the clock tower on one of the banks I passed, I had half an hour to get there. It wouldn’t take me that long; birds don’t exactly need to care about in rush-hour traffic.

I could have headed over right away. Ax would be there, if no one else. But I wasn’t in a rush to join up with the group. I knew how they would look at me: with the pitying look in their eyes I had been seeing the past few days since I’d gotten stuck in morph. I knew they would keep carefully pretending it made sense for me to keep fighting with the group even though I didn’t have the morphing power anymore. I didn’t want any more of that than I had to get.

Besides, Rachel wouldn’t be there yet.

No. That was a dangerous thought. I pushed it out of my mind and kept flying.

Flying is honestly amazing. I used to think I knew the city well, but I knew nothing. Not really. A human’s point of view on the ground is so limited. Up here I could see patterns, all the waves of movement that define a day in the life of a city, and my perspective changed with every moment. Here, the top of a building. Then its side, the windows reflecting light like the surface of the water. Then a little more distance, and I could see into the windows themselves—from far away, but that didn’t matter to the hawk. The hawk eyes could pick out print on a page from half a mile away.

And the freedom. Freedom was one of the things I’d liked about my old life. But there were still things I couldn’t do—not if I didn’t want to be chased away, or get picked up by the police, or spend a night hungry or cold.

No one bothers a bird. A bird doesn’t worry about people looking at it strangely. All I had to do to was catch a thermal under my wings and lift into the sky, unfettered and free.

I flew around the edges of the downtown area. It was past five, and people were outside, enjoying the same sunshine that was creating the thermals. I soared over a park—but that was no good. There was a leash-free area where dogs were running around, and seeing them reminded me too much of Lucy.

Turns out one of the things that changes when you’re permanently a bird is that your dog doesn’t recognize you anymore. Lucy had gone to live with Cassie and Jake. It was undeniably a better life than she would have had with me. But I still didn’t want to fly over other dogs having fun with their humans. I let the air currents take me away.

I ended up over a part of the city I knew better than others. It’s what most people would probably call a bad part of town. It’s not that far from the construction site where I was staying when everything changed—but it’s worlds away from a valuable piece of land tied up in zoning permits. Here, if a piece of land gets abandoned, it stays that way.

Not by everyone, though. I could see lots of people in the streets below: some of them workers in the warehouses, and some of them people without a job to go to, and who preferred to spend their time here than panhandling in the richer parts of town.

Not all people who are homeless are unemployed. A lot of the people I met at shelters or food banks or wherever were making minimum wage but just couldn’t afford rent near where they worked. The people I saw below, though, were mostly not in that category. They were the ones who couldn’t work, or who could have worked but couldn’t get it together enough to land a job. It’s hard to look for work when you don’t have a place to shower or a clean set of clothes or a mailing address to put on your resume.

There was a van parked on one of the streets, bright white with a green-and-blue logo on the side. I knew this van; it was a traveling medical clinic, aimed at those who couldn’t pay for care anywhere else. I knew the woman standing by the door, too: she had treated me a few times before. I was pretty sure her name was Dr. Chapman.

Maybe that’s why I circled closer. Or maybe it was that I saw she was arguing with someone. I recognized him: he was this skinny little guy named Artie who liked to raid hotel dumpsters for sample-sized toiletries and trade them to people for food or money. Artie was usually a pretty quiet guy, when he wasn’t selling, but right now his voice was raised enough that my hawk hearing picked it up before I even got close enough to land.

“I’m telling you, he was here!” Artie was saying. “This was the last place anyone saw him. You have to know where he is.”

Dr. Chapman didn’t seem flustered, even though Artie was getting pretty agitated. “I’m sorry, Artie, I haven’t seen him,” she said, voice soft enough that I could barely catch it. “Maybe he moved on somewhere.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Artie said. “Not Jeff.”

That gave me pause. I knew Jeff, too: he was a big silent guy who hung around Artie a lot. I didn’t know his story, but he moved like he was ex-military. I’d seen him protect a kid once, a runaway, when someone came for them they didn’t want to leave with.

Mostly, though, I’d seen him hang around Artie. If Artie said something had happened to Jeff, he would know.

 _Not my problem_ , I reminded myself. I had a meeting to go to, and this wasn’t my world anymore. Not that I’d have been much use even when it was my world. I never knew how to help when it came to thinks like that.

It was getting towards when I had to leave if I wanted to be on time to the meeting. I spread my wings, ready to take off again, but what Artie said next made me pause.

“They’re saying you guys did something to him,” Artie said. “They’re saying you put a slug in his head and made him disappear.”


	3. Chapter 3

I couldn’t quite believe what I’d heard. But hawks don’t mishear easily. A slug? Had Artie really said a slug?

There was no way I was leaving now. The other Animorphs would just have to wait.

Dr. Chapman laughed. It sounded like a normal human laugh. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. Did you check the shelter down on Elm?”

“Jeff doesn’t do shelters,” Artie said. “I’m telling you, he’s gone, and you guys made it happen.”

“Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you come in, and we’ll check the logs and see if he came through when I wasn’t on a shift?”

It was a kind thing to do. And the smile she gave him as she ushered him inside seemed real. Was it possible that behind that smile was an alien who was trying to take over his body?

I couldn’t quite believe it. Dr. Chapman had been one of the nicest doctors at the clinic—the one who asked questions like she really cared about the answers. But the slug thing couldn’t be a coincidence. And Artie had never been disconnected from reality. Some people on the streets did see things that weren’t there, but Artie wasn’t one of them.

Maybe someone had been playing a joke on him, or a rumor had gone wild. Sure. A random rumor about slugs that take over your brain.

I couldn’t hear what was going on in the truck. I fluttered closer, but they had an engine running inside, generating power for their equipment, and I still couldn’t make out any words.

If I could have morphed, I could have found out more. Hell, if I’d just been human, I could have gone into the truck and interrupted whatever was happening. Though, if the rumors were true—would I have been able to get out again?

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t human, and I never would be again. And birds didn’t break into clinic trucks.

I had to tell the others. I caught a breeze and lifted off, circling the truck, and that was when I saw it.

It was a little logo at the bottom of the truck’s side panel, beneath the announcement of free community health services. You know, the “brought to you by” section. I’d never noticed anything there before—maybe just hadn’t looked—but now I saw it immediately: the little green square, the corners rounded, with a white S in the middle of it. The two curves of the S had faces, like emojis, making eye contact across the letter and smiling.

Share.

Share is an app that Jake and Marco’s company makes. It’s supposed to be one of those social networking things: check into a location where another Share member is present, and you get connection points. Enough points, and you’ll go up a level, and finally be eligible for in-person meet-ups. Kind of dumb, but I guess it works for some people. It makes them feel like they belong somewhere, like they have a community.

Except that community is actually made up of Yeerks. One of the things we found out after Elfangor gave us the morphing power is that Jake and Marco’s software company, Dapsen, is actually a Yeerk front, and Share is the way they recruit new Controllers. When you get far enough in the app’s levels, you get made a full member, which means that a Yeerk goes into your head and takes over your life.

If they were sponsoring the clinic truck, it meant it wasn’t a coincidence that Artie was talking about slugs going into people’s brains. It meant that Artie was probably being made a Controller right now.

There was nothing I could do about it. I needed the others. I flapped for altitude, caught a thermal, and rode it toward the forest.

We were meeting in an abandoned quarry by the edge of the city. It looked normal from the air: nothing but a broad pit filled with dust and rock and the occasional pool of water. But as I got closer, I saw a faint blur in one part of the pit. Nothing that human eyes would pick up on, but my eyes were much better than a human’s.

I folded my wings and dove toward the blur. I cut my speed when I got close, and as I did, a doorway appeared in midair, a narrow curving slit that widened into an oval. Through it I could see the cream-and-tan interior of a spaceship.

Ax’s spaceship, cloaked to keep it hidden from both humans and Yeerks.

I swooped in through the door, flaring my wings to keep from crashing into the far wall. It was tight inside: maybe the size of a typical bedroom, not that any bedroom I’d ever had had been exactly typical. And it was crowded, because the others were already there.

They were all in human form—except Ax, of course. Jake was standing up, leaning against the far wall of the ship. He’s a big guy: the wall curved up to the ceiling, and he had to bend his head forward a little to fit. Cassie didn’t have that problem. She was standing close enough to Jake that their arms brushed, and she kept casting glances at Ax. She was being subtle about it, but like I said, a hawk doesn’t miss much.

Cassie wasn’t with us when we met Elfangor. She found out what was going on when the Controllers at Jake’s office took her down to the Yeerk pool for poking around a meeting of theirs. We rescued her, and after that, there wasn’t much point in trying to keep the secret from her. She hadn’t fought with us yet, though, and I didn’t know her too well. It was no surprise that she kept looking at Ax: he doesn’t exactly look like anything else you might find on Earth.

Ax is actually Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil. It was Marco’s idea to call him Ax. His ship had been damaged in the same battle that had sent Elfangor crashing to Earth. When he found us a few days later, he had decided that, in the absence of any of his own people left alive on the planet, he would fight with us. He looks a lot like his brother Elfangor: a head and torso that look almost human, except for the lack of a mouth and the extra eyes on stalks above his head. They swiveled, taking in the whole ship at once. His body is like a deer’s or a small horse’s, except for the thick tail that sweeps up and ends in a curved blade. I had seen that tail in battle; it’s deadly.

Oh, and the blue fur. I guess that’s not very deer- or human-like, either.

Ax stood near the main controls of the ship, his posture rigid in military correctness. On the other side of the ship sat the two other Animorphs: Marco, lounging on the floor and checking his reflection in a shiny equipment panel. And Rachel.

Rachel is one of those people who make you turn your head on the street and wonder if you’ve wandered onto a movie set. Only her beauty has nothing to do with makeup or hairstyling. I’ve seen her demorph from grizzly to human after a bloody battle, and she was still breathtaking. It’s just this glow that seems to surround her.

Right now she was sitting on a smooth stretch of counter between equipment panels, her long blond hair loose around her shoulders. She gave me a warm smile.

It didn’t make sense for me to react to that smile. Birds aren’t attracted to humans. And even if I hadn’t been a bird, Rachel wasn’t someone I could be with. Not in a million years. But my heart sped up regardless.

“Tobias, glad you’re here,” Jake said. “Let’s get started.”

Yes. Because the sooner we got started, the sooner we could keep Artie, and everyone like him, from falling prey to the Yeerks.


	4. Chapter 4

“Get started with what?” Marco asked. “We stopped the Yeerks from figuring out who we are. I have the merit badge and everything. Who says we have to do more?”

Rachel kicked at him with her high heel. “All of us. Because we haven’t stopped the Yeerks.”

“See, you say that like it’s my problem, and yet…”

“It is our problem.” Cassie’s voice was gentle but full of conviction. “The Yeerks are a danger to all of humanity.”

“And more than just humanity,” Jake said with a nod at Ax. “Which is why we need to act quickly.”

<Thank you, Prince Jake,> Ax said. He was using the thought-speak that Andalites use all the time, and that we use in morph. “Prince” is what he calls Jake. I guess it’s an Andalite rank or something. <I have become aware of an urgent threat to security.>

Ax’s many delicate Andalite fingers moved over the ship controls. A display came up on the wall: a rough map of the area around us, lit up in different colors. The forest immediately around us was mostly dark, but the city was lit up in reds and blues. <This is a map created by bouncing a cloaked signal off one of your human satellites,> Ax said. <I have analyzed it to display the different varieties of metal present in the environment.>

“Can you zoom in on my house?” Marco asked. “I’ve always been a Metallica guy, but lately I’ve been leaning a little more Iron Maiden, and I’m wondering how serious it is.”

Ax fixed his main eyes on Marco. <I do not see how this is relevant.>

Marco opened his mouth to respond, but Jake cut him off. “Don’t worry about him. Go on, Ax.”

<The colors correspond to different metals—steel, iron, aluminum.> His fingers fluttered over the map. I struggled to follow what he was pointing at; bird eyes aren’t that great at screens. <These are all common Earth metals. However, if I adjust the parameters…>

His fingers flew. The map refreshed itself, once, twice, and suddenly there was a new color: a green patch, bright enough that even I could make it out clearly.

“Hey, that’s where we are,” Rachel said. “Right?”

<That is correct,> Ax said. <The scan is picking up on the metals present in my ship which would not otherwise be found on Earth. Primarily narcite, but there are traces of prevulon as well.>

“Are you saying people might notice the ship?” Cassie asked.

<My ship’s cloaking technology, even in this damaged state, is good enough to withstand a passive scan,> Ax said. <It was only because I instructed the scan to make a more direct probe of this immediate area that I was able to detect it. Certainly no human technology would be capable of it.>

Marco was the one who leapt to the conclusion. “But Yeerk technology is.”

I felt that sink in with everyone. Marco is annoying, but he’s often the first to see stuff like that.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rachel said. “If the Yeerks can do it, why haven’t they already?”

<The scan must be extremely targeted in order to bypass the cloaking technology,> Ax said. <Such a targeted scan would be detectable even by human technology. The Yeerks have evidently not taken the effort, or the risk, to engage in such a scan of the entire countryside.>

“But if they do…” Jake said.

<My ship is too damaged to sustain a full shield,> Ax said. <The Yeerks will likely turn their Dracon beams on it and obliterate it.>

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. “So, what I’m hearing is that we should be clearing out,” Marco said.

<Or they may not,> Ax continued. <They may alternatively attempt to capture it and make use of the technology. Or, if they suspect my existence, they might attack the ship and attempt to capture me alive.>

That wasn’t a lot better. The Yeerks have exactly one morph-capable Controller: Visser Three. We had all experienced in the Yeerk pool how bad it was to have him as an enemy. None of us wanted to give the Yeerks another Andalite body, even if we hadn’t been concerned about Ax personally. And then there was the risk for the other Animorphs: if Ax were taken, the Yeerk in his head would be able to access his memories and figure out how to find the others.

Not me. There were some advantages to not having a permanent address. But I could barely carry on the fight with the others, never mind alone.

“I hope you’re building up to a plan,” Marco asked. “Because I like death metal as much as the next guy, but, you know, not literally.”

<There is one thing we might attempt,> Ax said. His fingers moved over the controls again. The map was replaced by some kind of complicated technical diagram. <Here you can see the inner workings of my ship. You’ll notice that the structure of the matter-conversion engines is for the most part intact, and the ambimatter backwash is contained.> He gestured to a few spots on the map. <But as you can see, the posivalent conduit has been damaged to the point of uselessness.>

Five pairs of eyes blinked at the diagram. This time, I didn’t think it was my bird vision that kept me from understanding it.

“What does that mean, Ax?” Cassie asked.

<It means, of course, that the engines cannot continue to generate energy,> Ax said. <I am able to run the basic cloak off the emergency power supply, but any greater expenditure of energy, such as the stronger shielding that would impede a targeted search, would require a new posivalent conduit.>

“So let’s make one,” Marco said.

Ax gave a polite chuckle. Then he said, <Oh, you are not joking.>

“No, hey, come on, we can make stuff,” Marco said. “I have a degree in it and everything. Point me at it, tell me what to do.”

<The construction of a posivalent conduit requires the quasi-annihilation of reality such that real space and Zero-space particles are able to comingle in a state of paradoxical suspension,> Ax said. <Are you able to construct an energetic suspension field able to accommodate the energy of ten of your sun?>

There was a short silence. “I built my sister an EZ-Bake oven once,” Marco muttered.

“What do you suggest, Ax?” Jake asked.

<I recommend we search for other debris of the battle,> Ax said. <While radio transmissions suggest there were any other surviving warriors, pieces of their fighters may have crashed to Earth as mine did. It may be that one of them will have a posivalent conduit intact.>

“Great, so let’s find them,” Rachel said. “Fire up the scanning thing.”

<I have done so,> Ax said. <There are only trace amounts of non-Earth metals visible in the scan—nothing substantial enough to be a ship. It is possible that any fallen fighters burned in the atmosphere, but I believe there is a likelier explanation.>

“Which is?” Jake asked.

<That they have already been found,> Ax said. <By the Yeerks.>


	5. Chapter 5

Marco groaned. “This whole conversation is just bad news,” he said. “I’ve seen the kind of firepower the Yeerks are packing. We’re not going up against that for some Andalite shipwrecks.”

<The Yeerks may not be guarding them personally,> Ax said. <The Yeerks suffered many casualties in the recent battle, and will have been stretched thin by the attempts to find you and cover for the incident in the construction site. If any of the wreckage is in areas humans are unlikely to frequent, they may have simply left it where it is for now, under temporary cloaking devices.>

Jake nodded. “So you’re saying we could find it, disable the cloaking devices, and maybe use the parts to fix this ship.”

<Not only that,> Ax said. <If we are able to harvest the correct parts, I will be able to reestablish Zero-space communication. We could reach out to my people and ask for aid.>

The mood in the ship shifted immediately. “The Andalites?” Cassie said. “Do we think they’d be able to help?”

“Elfangor did say they’d be coming back,” Jake said.

<By now high command will be aware that our ships were destroyed, but they will not have the details of the battle or the situation on the ground,> Ax said. <They will be deciding where to allocate resources. If I were to contact them, I could argue for the defense of Earth.>

“We have to do it,” Rachel said. “This could be what we need to unseat the Yeerks.”

“Anything that gets this whole thing over with,” Marco said.

“Ax, we have to search visually, right?” Jake said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can go out in bird of prey morphs, cover a lot of ground before sundown.”

They were all so excited. They were right to be excited: this was a chance to get the help we needed in the fight against the Yeerks. I didn’t want to say anything. But I couldn’t stop thinking of Artie in that truck.

<There’s something else,> I said.

They all turned to look at me. I should have been expecting their attention, but I wasn’t, and I felt my thoughts scatter under their gaze. I’m not used to people looking at me directly. Almost no one did, before—definitely not people passing on the streets. They didn’t want to see someone they might feel bad for.

What about when the others looked at me now? Did they feel bad for me, stuck in this body? Did they think, _Oh yeah, Tobias, he’s the thing we don’t want to become_?

I shuffled my talons a little on the floor. I wished I’d found a spot where they weren’t all looking down at me, but it was too late now. <There’s something happening,> I said. <This mobile clinic downtown. I think they’re infesting people.>

“How many people?” Jake asked, straightening up. “Are they taking them by force?”

<I’m not sure,> I said. I told them what I’d seen: Artie insisting they’d put a slug in his friend’s ear, Dr. Chapman getting him to come into the truck.

“This is bad,” Cassie said. “I didn’t realize they were taking people off the streets. They could infest the whole city.”

“Hang on,” Marco said more slowly. “This guy you heard ranting about slugs. He was homeless?”

It was funny, how my hawk body tensed at that just like my human body would have. <Yeah,> I said.

“What does it matter?” Rachel said to Marco, a hint of a growl in her voice. “It’s not like you need a house to be taken by a Yeerk.”

“Just saying.” Marco smirked. “A guy on the streets, ranting about aliens…”

“A slug is pretty specific,” Cassie said.

<Artie’s not crazy,> I said. My thought-speak voice was a lot steadier than my speaking voice would have been. <And anyway, there was a Share logo on the truck.>

“Oh man,” Jake said. “Yeah, this adds up. It makes sense that they’d use medical facilities to infest people.”

“So let’s go get ’em,” Rachel said, glaring at Marco.

“Tobias, does it make sense to act tonight?” Jake asked.

I tried to remember the truck’s hours. Tried to block out what Marco had said. <The truck is probably gone by now,> I said. <But they’re usually out all day—well. All day Saturday.>

There was an awkward silence. I saw a few pairs of eyes dart towards Ax.

He was standing as stiffly as ever. <I will leave it to your discretion where you allocate your team’s efforts, Prince Jake,> he said.

“What, we can’t do both?” Rachel said. “We stomp the clinic truck, we go look for Andalite ships. Easy.”

“Or, we get stomped in return, and we can’t look for anything at all,” Marco said.

Rachel raised an eyebrow at him. “You planning to get stomped?”

“They’re actively infesting people,” Cassie said. “They could take dozens more tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but we already knew people were being infested,” Marco said. “This isn’t anything new.” He spread his hands. “Look, you all want to fight the Yeerks, great, but we can’t go around putting out every tiny fire they start anywhere. No way is this their main target. They’re trying to infiltrate human society. Why would they they go after people with no connections or influence? These people are useless.”

“Hey now,” Rachel said, her voice dangerously low.

“I’m not sure it’s ever a good idea to make assumptions like that about a whole group of people,” Cassie said. “I feel like you should know that, Marco.”

Her voice was gentle, but Marco looked abashed. Cassie’s Black and Marco’s Hispanic. I’m sure they’ve had different experiences with people’s assumptions than I have. “Fine, maybe they’re not useless,” Marco said. “The point is, what are we trying to do? Run around after the Yeerks and try to stop every little thing they’re doing? Or kick them off our planet? Because I only see one way of doing the second thing, and it’s not by going after the this clinic truck or whatever.”

There was a short silence. I wanted to speak up, but I didn’t think there was anything I could say. It really _wasn’t_ as important to stop the mobile clinic as it was to find a way to contact the Andalites and get them to come save Earth. I just couldn’t stop thinking of Artie going through that door.

“Ax,” Jake said finally, “how time-sensitive is the danger to your ship?”

<It is difficult to say,> Ax said carefully. <The Yeerks may do a targeted search at any time, or never. However, the more time that passes, the more opportunity the Yeerks will have to move or destroy any wreckage that exists. Our odds of success decrease sharply with each day that passes.>

Jake nodded. Heavily. “It sounds like we have to go for that, then.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry, Tobias. We’ll deal with the clinic situation later. But we have to do this first.”


	6. Chapter 6

The meeting broke up with a plan to meet up first thing the next morning. As soon as the door to Ax’s ship opened, before the others were done morphing to bird, I was up and away.

I could have waited for Rachel. We hadn’t made any arrangements or anything. But I’d been hanging out with her most evenings, when it was too late for me to get in any good flying. Sometimes I even spent the night on her balcony, clinging to the steel railing close to the side of the building.

But hawks don’t need a railing to perch on. It was silly of me to pretend to live in a building, just because I wanted to pretend to be close to someone. When had I ever had something like that?

It wasn’t fair to resent Rachel for not pushing back when Jake had decided to go after the parts for Ax’s ship. I hadn’t pushed back, either. It was just a good reminder that I couldn’t expect her to have my back, just because we’d been spending time together.

Instead of going with Rachel, I rose high on the thermals above the cooling city and aimed for a meadow on the edge of the woods where I’d been hunting lately. I didn’t know for sure that there was no other bird of prey that had made it their territory. But I hadn’t seen any around, and no one challenged me as I came swooping in.

I found a branch high up in a tree, one the hawk mind liked the look of, and settled in for the night. Closed my eyes, like any hawk would. And dreamed.

I don’t know for sure that other hawks don’t dream. Maybe their sleep is full of air currents and prey and the danger of golden eagles. I’m sure they don’t dream of the things I dreamed of that night: the inevitability of death in the oncoming maw of a monster. The air full of fire and blades. The panic as you realize your body can’t change, won’t turn into the one you want, that you’re trapped forever in a body that will never be right.

That last one wasn’t new.

In the morning, I watched the meadow until a mouse twitched the tall grass, and I ate. Then I flew to Ax’s ship to join the others.

In a way, that was the weirdest thing I did these days. I was used to sleeping outdoors. Used to scavenging for food. Going to meet up with other people? That was strange.

The others were mostly there already, Jake and Cassie and Rachel in human form. I perched awkwardly on an instrument panel as we waited for Marco.

He came tearing in about fifteen minutes later in his osprey morph. <Sorry, turned my alarm off in my dream,> he said. <It was the one where the hot ER nurse takes my vitals. I had a _really_ loud pulse today.>

Jake laughed dutifully. “You’re just in time for us to pair off.”

<Nice,> Marco said. <Hey, Rachel. How’s your ER nurse impression?>

“I’m with Tobias,” she said coolly.

It was a nice surprise to hear her say that. Granted, she was probably doing it to get out of being paired with Marco. But it was still nice.

The plan was to split up and cover three sections of the forest to the south of the city. Ax had outlined them on the map. As he’d explained, the Yeerks were more likely to have left wreckage intact if it was far away from human habitation. So we’d start south, work our way north, cover as much ground as we could, looking for the blur of cloaked ships.

The others morphed to birds of prey. I tried not to watch too closely. The others call the morphing process gross, and I guess it is—your body basically melts from one form to another, old parts vanishing and new parts erupting at surprising moments. But it never bothered me that much. It was always more about the rush of it for me: the ability to choose what body you want to have. To just think about it, and instantaneously, have your body _change_.

I knew how lucky I was to have gotten to do it even a few dozen times. And I couldn’t complain; it could have turned out so much worse. But I still didn’t want to watch.

The others finished morphing and took to the air. Rachel and I had the closest section of forest, so the others started powering away. Once they were out of sight, Rachel said, <Okay, ready to head back into the city?>

<Huh?> I had been scoping out the forest below, trying to figure out the best place to look for Andalite wreckage. <Why?>

<To the clinic truck,> she said. <We’re obviously doing that, right?>

It hadn’t been obvious to me. <What about what Jake said?>

Rachel made a snorting noise in my head. <I’ve learned better than to let straight white cis men tell me what to do.>

One of the things I miss most about being human is the ability to smile. <You think we can handle it alone?>

<Please,> she said. <The two of us? We can handle anything.>

That was pretty obviously not true. The words rose in my mind, and I almost said them: that I wasn’t up for handling much, stuck like this. That even before, when I’d been human, I hadn’t been the best at it. That if you were looking for someone to be half of a successful pair, I wasn’t the one.

But the air was hot under my wings, and Rachel had just taken my side against the others. I didn’t want to ruin that.

<Besides,> Rachel said, <do you really think we’re gonna find an intact Andalite fighter that the Yeerks just decided to leave in place? No way. I want to at least do some good here before I go.>

Right. Of course. I had almost forgotten: she was going to be leaving soon.

See, Rachel doesn’t live here. She lives clear across the country, in a city on the other coast, where she has the kind of job that makes my life look even more like a failure in comparison. I’d heard her on calls a few times in her hotel room, talking about dollar amounts so large they seemed imaginary. Her office was letting her work remotely for a few weeks, but she’d have to go back soon. Back to her important job. Back to her fancy apartment. Back to her fiancé. I’d heard her talking to him, too, once or twice. She had a whole life waiting for her, one that didn’t involve the Animorphs.

It wasn’t anything I hadn’t known. But it was good to get a reminder of it, as I banked to aim us toward the city. Rachel was leaving soon. However good it felt to have her have my back, it wasn’t something I could afford to get used to.


	7. Chapter 7

It didn’t take too long to find the clinic truck. It moved in a circuit around our city and a few neighboring ones, and I knew roughly where to find it based on where it had been yesterday.

<So how do you want to play this?> Rachel asked as we perched on a nearby building. <Should I go human, pose as a homeless person?>

I laughed before I could stop myself. It wasn’t that someone like Rachel couldn’t end up homeless; she had enough of a support system to make it unlikely, but disasters happen. And you get shockingly beautiful people on the street, too, though it can be hard to stay that way if you don’t find a way out. But: <It takes longer than a few minutes to make yourself look like you’ve been living on the streets,> I said. <The people at the clinic will be able to tell the difference.>

Besides, though I didn’t want to say it, I doubted that Rachel was a good enough actress. There’s something very…very _true_ about Rachel. Like the strength of her, the irresistible force at the core of her, shines through no matter what form she’s in. She believes in her own ability to face any challenge—and she’s usually right. But I didn’t think she’d do a good job of imitating someone who’d been forced to accept that there were at least a few challenges too large for them.

<Well, there’s always the direct approach,> she said. <Grizzly?>

There was some appear to that. But we’d miss the chance to find out what was going on. <What if you pretend to be a volunteer?>

<Sure, but my morphing outfit is going to look a lot jankier in that scenario.>

We circled above the area, looking for a good spot for Rachel to demorph. I could already see a line at the clinic: a handful of people waiting for their turn to enter. I recognized one of them as this woman Shauna who could sometimes get you leftover pizza from the Papa John’s downtown, but I didn’t know any of them well.

I wondered how many of them would end up as Controllers before the day was out.

<Hang on,> Rachel said. <I know her.>

For a second I thought she meant Shauna. Then I saw that Dr. Chapman had stepped out of the truck and was welcoming the next patient in. <You know Dr. Chapman?>

<That’s Melissa,> Rachel said. <She and I were, like, best friends in middle school. I didn’t know she was doing this now.>

This time I did stop myself before I laughed. It was just too perfect: of course I knew the people waiting in line for the free clinic, and Rachel knew the doctor.

<You think she’s a Controller?> Rachel said.

<I don’t know,> I said, though actually it seemed pretty likely. <Probably.>

<Wow, that’s surreal,> Rachel said. <She was always, like, the nicest girl in our class.>

<I don’t think that really matters to the Yeerks.>

<Probably not. I guess I can’t go in as myself, then.>

<Insect morph?>

<Ugh. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to use that one.>

<No, hold on.> Someone was coming out of the clinic truck. Artie. And he wasn’t alone: he was leading three other people out of the truck, through the little back door.

<That’s him,> I said. <The guy who was asking about his friend yesterday.>

<He’s a Controller now, right?>

He led the other three across the street to a parked car. Pulled out a key. Got into the driver’s seat.

<I don’t know,> I said, <but I’m pretty sure he didn’t own a car yesterday.>

<Let’s follow him,> Rachel said.

The car pulled into the street, going a steady thirty miles per hour. Way faster than we could flap from our low altitude. <Any idea how we do that?>

Rachel made a dismissive noise in my head. <Come on, we can handle a car.>

We probably couldn’t, if he’d gone toward the highway. Rachel’s eagle morph is powerful, but it isn’t as fast as my hawk body, and even I couldn’t match pace with a car. Fortunately, Artie turned to go deeper into the city, and there were enough turns and traffic lights and stop signs that even Rachel’s eagle could keep up.

<This would have been easier if he’d just had an open sun roof,> she groused, working to keep up with me as Artie hit a green light and sped ahead.

<You wanted to hitch a ride?>

<Could’ve at least made him think twice before driving so fast,> she said.

I focused on keeping his car in sight. It was a black Corolla, the definition of nondescript, but there was a white scrape on the back of his bumper that my hawk eyes could have picked out from a mile or more away. <I think he’s turning north.>

He was: toward the suburbs that sprawl to the north of the city. The suburbs that, through some good road design, can be reached by a stretch of fast, straight, multilane highway.

We powered our wings to go after him. <Are we sure this is a good idea?> I said. <We’re getting pretty far from the forest we’re supposed to be searching.>

<We’re not giving up _now_ ,> Rachel said, but her thought-speak voice sounded strained. Her eagle must have weighed at least five times as much as I did.

We used all the altitude we’d built up, coasting after the car, and continued to lose ground. When the car was far enough ahead of us that I could just barely be sure it was the right one, it took an exit and disappeared from view.

Rachel said a word that would have surprised bird watchers. Not that I hoped there were any around, to see a harpy eagle and a red-tailed hawk chase a car.

<Turn around?> I asked.

<No,> she said. <We might still be able to find it.>

The car had been out of sight for a few minutes by the time we got to the suburb. I was pessimistic that we’d still be able to find it; there were so many directions it could have gone in. But I was willing to go along for the ride. I liked that Rachel didn’t want to give up on this.

We split up and circled, looking for the car. Black cars. More black cars. None of them the right black car.

I was just about to say we should call it, that we should at least try to accomplish what Jake had asked of us, when I heard Rachel’s thought-speak voice, faint from distance. <Tobias? Don’t freak out, but I think you should come see this.>


	8. Chapter 8

I caught up with Rachel, who was above a woodsy area past the town proper. It was under construction—or at least, that’s what it looked like. It seemed like there had been something industrial there before, or maybe a community building. It was unrecognizable now, barricaded by temporary fencing and caution tape, but that didn’t make a difference from the air.

No, what made it hard to recognize from the air was the huge alien spaceship that had crashed in the middle of it.

“Spaceship” might have been the wrong word. It was definitely alien, but it was more like…a snow globe. A broken snow globe. Huge and round and bearing the remnants of a clear dome. Only instead of a fake wintry landscape, it was full of blue-green grass and trees I’d never seen before. And instead of being small enough to pick up and shake, it was huge: hundreds of yards across. A whole alien landscape surrounded by a jagged ring of broken glass.

It was beautiful. An alien national park. Except for the people walking through it with Dracon beams at their sides.

<What the hell,> Rachel said. <Did the Yeerks shoot down some kind of space-going zoo or something?>

It did look like that. <People must have seen this,> I said. <How are they hiding something this huge?>

<News helicopters, at least,> Rachel agreed. <It must be too large to cloak. They should just blow it up already.>

Movement at the edge of the barrier. <Rachel. Look.>

The car we’d been chasing had pulled into a dusty makeshift parking lot. Artie got out, along with the three other people he’d picked up at the mobile clinic. They slipped through a space in the barrier. They were all in normal clothes, like the people inside the dome, but the person who greeted them on the other side of the barrier was in a full radiation suit. You know, HAZMAT-style.

<That’s weird,> Rachel said. <Is this thing radioactive, or isn’t it?>

<Either way, we’d better tell the others,> I said.

We headed back south toward the forest. It took an hour or two to round them up, long enough that I was starting to think about eating again, and Rachel had to land and demorph in the woods to reset her morphing clock.

<About time someone found something,> Marco grumbled when we found them. <This guy wanted to look in the ocean.>

<The ocean is a very likely spot for finding fallen spacecraft,> Ax said.

<Not when you’re in osprey morph, it isn’t,> Marco said.

Ax was very excited to hear our news. <You’re certain it was a complete hemisphere?> he kept asking.

<I mean, yeah,> I said. I was trying not to feel too proud of our discovery. Take that, everyone: the useless one, the one who can’t morph, helped find the thing you were looking for. <I mean, it used to be.>

We tracked down Jake and Cassie and led them all north of the city, toward the dome. <Hang on,> Jake said when we started getting close. <How did you guys even find this? You were supposed to be searching the forest.>

I panicked a little. I had been hoping he wouldn’t ask that. Rachel just answered coolly, though. <What do you care? We found the thing, didn’t we?>

Jake grumbled a little but let it pass.

<Oh wow,> Cassie said as we came in sight of the dome. <I see why you guys noticed this.>

It was even more spectacular now that the sun was higher overhead. The light shone off the jagged edges of the dome, creating a sparkling ring around the grass and the lake and the trees like weird-colored broccoli and asparagus spears.

<No offense,> Marco said as we floated above it, <but if this is what your spaceships look like, no wonder you lost the battle.>

<This is merely the dome of an Andalite dome ship,> Ax said, snippily. <It is of no military utility and was detached for the battle.>

<So this part won’t have any engines or anything,> Jake said. <Nothing for us or the Yeerks to get.>

<On the contrary,> Ax said. <The dome has its own engines and communication arrays in case of separation. They are in the rounded area in the center.>

I saw what he was referring to: the grass in the center of the dome rose up into a mound about as tall as a person. It was still covered in grass, but some of it had been peeled back to display instrument panels. Most of the dozen or so people in the dome were clustered around the peeled-back spots.

<Cool,> Marco said. <A hobbit house.>

<I do not know what a hobbit house is, but I doubt you could recognize this,> Ax said. <It houses technology hundreds of years more advanced than anything on your planet.>

<Well, just saying, Rachel should duck when we go inside,> Marco said.

<Should we go in and check it out?> Cassie asked. <That’s the kind of thing we do, right?>

<Sure,> Rachel said. <Though I want to know what’s going on with the guy in the HAZMAT suit first.>

HAZMAT person was still outside the entrance to the dome, like they were supervising. <Ah,> Ax said. <Yes. If it is one of the ship’s engines, it may be that the ambimatter containment system is not intact. However—>

<Whoa,> Jake said. <Ax, are you saying this thing could be radioactive?>

Ax laughed. <I appreciate this example of human humor. Our engines have of course not been powered by nuclear instability for many hundreds of years. However, the Z-space engines we use now do generate small amounts of ambimatter.>

<My doctor tried to prescribe that to me once,> Marco said.

<Is that dangerous?> I asked.

<In normal ship operations, no,> Ax said. <But if the containment field becomes inoperative, the ambimatter may leak out, and, in pursuing its previous level of reality, enter a state of dynamic entropy in which it will pass its quasi-presence on to neighboring particles.>

<You wanna try that again, without the technobabble?> Rachel said.

<It will cause matter to become less real,> Ax said.

<Oh,> Marco said. <Yeah, okay, that sounds bad.>

<Indeed,> Ax said. <The effect will be similar to your radioactivity, but quicker-acting.>

<That can’t be true, though,> Cassie said. <There are other people down there without any protective gear.>

<Maybe they’re being protected in some way we can’t see?> Jake said.

<No,> I said, feeling sick. I was remembering Marco’s question: why would the Yeerks go after people who don’t have any human connections? No reason, unless they didn’t want anyone to come looking for them later. <No, I’m pretty sure they’re not.>


	9. Chapter 9

Rachel wanted to blow it up.

<There are still people inside it,> Cassie said.

<Well, obviously we get them out first,> Rachel said. <Then we blow it up.>

<Okay, chill out, Daenerys,> Marco said. <First of all, no beam weapons. Second of all, how do we know an explosion wouldn’t just send the radiation everywhere?>

<Eliminating the engines with a Yeerk Dracon beam or Andalite shredder would be effective at neutralizing the ambimatter,> Ax said. <However, I would not recommend it yet. The Z-space engine will likely yield the parts I need to restore shielding capabilities to my ship. And it is possible that I will be able to make adjustments that will contain the ambimatter.>

<It would be better if we could contain it instead of blowing it up,> Cassie conceded.

<Let’s give it a shot,> Jake said. <Everyone has insect morphs, right? Ax goes human, we all catch a ride and provide backup.>

<Whoa, whoa,> Marco said. <You want us to go into the dome with the antimatter?>

<Ambimatter,> Ax corrected. <It denotes matter that has spent an extended period of time in suspension between Z-space and regular space, such that its reality levels are degraded to a point of paradoxical—>

<Yeah, we get it, you studied science,> Rachel said. <So can we go in there or not?>

<It will have no lasting effect on our morphed bodies,> Ax said. <Any damage will be erased when the substance of our temporary bodies returns to Z-space.>

<Except for Tobias,> Cassie said.

It was amazing, how I could feel painfully obvious even in the body of a bird floating dozens of yards away from them. <It’s fine,> I said. <You guys don’t need to worry about me.>

<Like hell we don’t,> Rachel said. <We’re getting you out of here. We’re not gonna let you be—>

<The ambimatter should not present a danger at this distance,> Ax said. <It does not radiate in the way that your radiation does. It is only within the area of the erstwhile dome that it will be hazardous.>

<Okay, great. Tobias stays up here and keeps watch,> Jake said. <The rest of us, let’s go in.>

They were giving me an out. I should have argued with it: why was my body so important, that I could stay safe up here while so many people were already being exposed down below? But I was selfish. I didn’t want to be hurt, and they were letting me get away with it.

The others landed in the trees near the construction barrier and demorphed. Then they morphed again: Ax to the human morph he created from composite DNA, and the others to various insects. I turned away again during the morphing process.

When they were ready, Ax walked his tiny insect zoo toward the gap in the fence where Rachel and I had seen Artie and the others enter. He was too clean to have been living on the streets, and his skintight morphing outfit too new, but we were banking on no one paying that much attention to him. Why would he be here, if he weren’t a Controller?

The person in the HAZMAT suit just waved Ax on. Maybe they didn’t want to get any closer than they had to to the radiation. Or whatever it was.

There was an airlock-style door at the entrance to the dome. I tensed as Ax neared it, but he just put his hand on a red pad next to the door, and the door slid open.

<The Yeerks have evidently penetrated the initial layer of security,> Ax said.

<Does that mean we’re too late?> Rachel asked.

<I suspect not,> Ax said. <If they had gotten far enough to sever the connections between the engines and the broader dome network, the rest of the dome would have been eliminated.>

<Okay, Ax, we’re gonna drop off,> Jake said. <We’ll find a hidden spot and go to battle morphs in case you need backup.>

I watched, from my vantage point in the sky, as tiny insects left Ax’s body. Jake, Marco, and Rachel had gone fly; Cassie was a dragonfly. They dispersed into the stands of brightly colored broccoli-trees. A minute or two later, I caught sight of human bodies emerging—visible to me, not to the Yeerks, or so I hoped. Shortly after that, leopard spots and wolverine fur started appearing.

Meanwhile, Ax had gone up to the group of people around the engine mound. He had accepted a tool from the Yeerks and started working with the others.

<Prince Jake, I was correct in my assessment,> he said. <They have been able to disable the engine safeguards and are attempting to carve their way manually through the narcite shell.>

<Can they do that?> Jake asked.

<Not quickly,> Ax said. <I will attempt to find a subtle method of bypassing their process.>

I circled, looking out for coming danger. I didn’t expect there to be anything. The danger was already right there in the dome with the other Animorphs.

I did see a few people beyond the construction barrier, though. One turned his head, and I realized I knew him. It was Jeff.

He was talking to a woman; I didn’t recognize her. “No, I think you’ve still got enough skull coverage to stay in that one,” she was saying as I drew closer. “The councilor doesn’t want us to waste too many bodies on this.”

The councilor. We had met her, in the Yeerk pool: ostensibly the CEO of Jake and Marco’s company. In reality, a Controller who even Visser Three answered to. I wasn’t surprised to hear she was behind this. Or that she’d talk about wasting bodies.

“We’re gonna go through dozens, if we keep this up,” Jeff said. His voice sounded weird. A little garbled; not like it had sounded the few times I’d heard him talk before. “Can’t they come up with a way to go faster?”

She shrugged. “If you have more up-to-date knowledge of Andalite tech than the Visser, sure.”

Jeff snorted. “I’m just looking forward to getting out of this body,” he said. “Before it falls apart.”

He walked away, toward the parking lot. I wasn’t sure what he meant, about his body falling apart: he was still standing straight, walking fine. But then I circled around, and I caught a glimpse of the other side of his face.

It was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

Not entirely gone. But the eye was missing from the socket, his cheek was rotted away, and his jaw looked like it had had a bite torn out of it. It was all raw and red, continuing down his neck, under the shirt he was wearing. The shirt that must have been new, because it was still intact.

This was what the Yeerks were doing to them. To us. Letting our bodies rot away like they didn’t even matter.

I wanted to be sick. Birds don’t have a vomiting impulse. I wanted to do it anyway.

From inside the dome, I heard Ax’s thought-speak. <Prince Jake, I believe they have noticed me.>

I had gotten distracted. I’d lost too much altitude. I flapped to regain it, rising above the construction barrier to where I could see into the dome.

Ax was still in front of the grassy mound. Two of the other workers were trying to hold him in place. But he was changing: his legs were blurring, and a tail was emerging from his backside.

<They have definitely noticed me,> he said calmly.

I heard a roar as a leopard bounded out of the tangerine-colored trees. It was followed by the rolling mass of a grizzly, a swiftly darting wolverine, and the tan blur of a lioness.

I started looking around frantically to see how I could help. But it wasn’t much of a match: four powerful animals and an emerging Andalite versus a dozen humans armed only with engineering tools. Jake and Marco snarled and nipped at the humans holding Ax, and they let him go.

<Let’s get out of here!> Jake said.

They all turned to run toward the entrance, where a couple of the people from outside had entered the dome. One of them pulled out a Dracon beam.

<Watch out!> I shouted. But the guy with her put his hand on the woman’s wrist, and she lowered it. Probably didn’t want to shoot the engines by accident.

Just then there was a flash of Dracon fire, though: from the workers by the engine mound. One of them had a Dracon beam.

The red beam shot across the dome. Too high. The worker aimed again. <Jake, duck!> I shouted.

He leapt out of the way, and the beam exploded an orange tree.

It seemed to be only the one guy with a Dracon beam. But he kept shooting in quick bursts. I should dive—or shouldn’t I? What about the ambimatter?

How could I care about ambimatter when the others’ lives were in danger?

I was too late, anyway. The others got to the other side of a stand of trees, but not before one last shot caught Cassie’s lioness in the back leg.

I heard her snarl of pain and saw her falter. <Cassie!> Jake shouted, and doubled back.

Cassie was still running, but only on three feet. Marco in wolverine morph reached the people by the entrance and leapt on one of them. Rachel swatted the other with her grizzly paw, and Ax got the airlock doors open.

They weren’t going to make it out, though. The person in the HAZMAT suit was waiting right outside the entrance with a Dracon beam of their own, and they were too close to miss.

I shouted to warn the others. But what could they do? They had to get out, and the clear walls were too high everywhere else. HAZMAT suit was standing just far enough from the entrance to get a shot in before they got attacked. No one could do anything.

No one, I realized, except me.

Time to make up for my failure from before. I had built up a decent amount of altitude by now. I drew in my wings and let gravity turn that altitude into speed. When I was maybe fifty feet up, I opened my throat and let out an ear-splitting _TSEEEEEER_.

HAZMAT suit looked up, just in time for me to fly into their face. They flinched and fell back, just as the doors burst open and the Animorphs poured out of the dome.

I didn’t stick around. I used my momentum to sweep up and over the construction barrier, and flapped to gain enough altitude to follow the others.

They didn’t waste any time getting out of there. The gap in the barrier was only large enough for one of them at a time, and the Yeerks were pouring out of the dome, Dracon beams in hand, ready to shoot anyone who was waiting to pass through. Rachel solved that problem: she bowled into the barrier in her massive grizzy body, and a whole section of it fell into the parking lot. The five of them barreled over the barrier in their faster-than-human bodies and disappeared into the woods before the Yeerks could follow.

They ran for maybe five minutes before Cassie stumbled and fell with a leonine cry. Jake stopped immediately. <Demorph!> he said to her.

<Prince Jake, if I may,> Ax said. <She should not demorph.>

<She’s hurt,> he said, his thought-speak voice strained.

<She has been harmed by Dracon fire,> Ax said. <She must not demorph until the damage has been removed.> He brought his tail blade down in one swift, shining arc, right at the joint of Cassie’s back leg, and separated her leg from her body.


	11. Chapter 11

The reaction was instantaneous. Everyone leapt forward with a thought-speak cry. <What the fuck are you doing?> Jake roared. Rachel didn’t bother with that: she bowled into Ax and knocked him head-over-hooves.

Andalites might look like delicate, but they can defend themselves. He whipped his tail toward her and cut deep into the grizzly flesh.

<Hey, whoa!> Marco shouted, but Rachel roared and swiped at Ax again, getting her paw cut for her trouble.

<Hey!> Jake shouted. He was more effective than Marco: he leapt between them so that they both backed up. <Will you two cut it out so that I can help my wife demorph?>

Cassie didn’t need help. She was already demorphing. In a surprising way, actually: her body was changing shape and shrinking, but the lion’s fur stayed in place. She looked like she was wearing a very luxurious lion costume.

The part I was really interested in, though, was her missing right leg. I watched the spot where Ax’s blade had exposed the joint, and I breathed in relief as a new, human leg started growing out and out.

<Thank God,> Jake said fervently. He was next to her, watching her intently with his leopard eyes. He started demorphing.

<It was a necessary medical procedure,> Ax said. He was standing well back from Rachel. <Dracon fire will linger in the flesh even though a demorph, unless the affected flesh is severed from the body.>

He sounded relatively unruffled, despite the mini-battle that had just happened. I guess that’s what years in the Andalite military will do to you. Or maybe it was just who he was.

<Cassie, are you okay?> Rachel asked. She hadn’t demorphed yet.

Cassie nodded. “I think so.” She moved her right leg a little. “Yeah. I’m fine.” She looked at Ax. “Thank you.”

<It is standard procedure,> Ax said. He did sound a little flustered now that she was thanking him.

She smiled. “Thank you anyway,” she said. “I know that kind of thing isn’t easy.”

Cassie’s a large-animal vet. She probably has a lot of experience doing the kind of thing Ax had just done, to animals who don’t understand why she’s hurting them.

“All right, if everyone’s done attacking each other,” Marco said. He had demorphed and was sitting on the pine-needle carpet. “Maybe we can figure out what to do with the Andalite terrarium back there.”

Rachel started demorphing. <I still say we blow it up.>

<I was not able to gain access,> Ax said, <but I believe I could, if given longer to work without Yeerk interference.>

“Yeah, that seems easy to get,” Marco said.

<Actually, I anticipate it being a challenge,> Ax said.

“You think?” Marco said, rolling his eyes.

<I am unsure why you ask for my opinion when I have already given it,> Ax said. <Nor why you make claims you know to be false, as if they will further your conversational point.>

“Oh my God, Jake, you gotta take over,” Marco said. “I can’t deal with someone who doesn’t speak sarcasm.”

Jake wasn’t paying attention. He was still bent over Cassie, hand on her leg.

Marco cleared his throat. Jake looked up. “Huh?”

“Sorry to interrupt a tender moment or whatever,” Marco said, “but we do still have a giant honking alien paperweight in the middle of a suburb to deal with. In case you’d forgotten.”

Jake looked a little embarrassed. “Right. Right.” He turned to face the rest of the group, but kept his arm around Cassie and his other hand on her restored leg.

“Ax, you said this dome is leaking dangerous materials,” Cassie said. “How can we stop it from doing that?”

<Containment may still be possible, but I would need a prolonged stretch of time in which to work on the console directly,> Ax said.

<There may be a way I can gain access with only minimal time spent at the console itself,> Ax said. <I was able to gather a limited amount of information about the security in place, and with that information and my general knowledge of Andalite security protocols, I may be able to process a solution on my ship computer that will grant us rapid access.>

“Great,” Jake said. “How long will that take?”

<Depending on the complexity of the algorithm, anywhere between twenty-four and thirty-six hours,> Ax said.

Marco whistled. “You Andalites do not take your security lightly.”

“I don’t know,” Cassie said. “I don’t love the idea of more of this ambimatter substance leaking into the environment for that long.”

I hadn’t been planning to say anything. It wouldn’t add any information they didn’t have already. But I couldn’t keep quiet. <I saw one of them,> I blurted. <One of the workers, I mean. This guy I used to know. He had, uh…>

It was hard to figure out how to put it. How do you describe an injury like that?

<His face was half gone,> I said. <Like it had been eaten away.>

Cassie looked horrified. “That’s awful.”

“Can they even repair that kind of damage?” Jake said.

<They’re not gonna—> I cut myself off. I didn’t want to shout, even if only in people’s heads. Didn’t want to feel like I was out of control. <No one’s going to fix it,> I said, a little calmer. <Jeff isn’t going to a plastic surgeon after this. He’s just going to live like that. Whatever damage the Yeerks do to any of these people’s bodies. They’re just gonna be like that, forever. If they even survive.>

“Yeah,” Jake said, “you’re right. Sorry, Tobias.”

“Yeah, fuck that,” Rachel said. “Let’s go steal a Dracon beam, blow the thing up right now.”

<I understand and admire your reluctance to imperil fellow humans,> Ax said. <But I must encourage you to weigh that against the tactical advantages of having a fully functional spacecraft at our disposal.>

“Wait, _fully_ functional?” Marco said. “I thought you were just fixing the shield or whatever.”

<That was before we found the Dome ship,> Ax said, like that should be obvious. <With the parts from those engines, I should be able to repair my ship entirely.>

Marco raised his eyebrows. “Okay, you might have just made it worth it.”

“Marco,” Cassie said, “we’re talking about human lives.”

“Right,” Marco said. “The ones that will be lost if we lose this war you all want to fight, remember?”

“Can you tell us more about what your ship can do, Ax?” Jake asked.

<It can of course perform all the usual functions of a galactic fighter,> Ax said, sounding surprised to be asked. <Z-space communication and travel, atmospheric flight, weapon arrays, stealth.>

“Stealth,” Jake echoed.

“We’re already stealthy,” Rachel said. “We can already fly. We want a ship, big deal, we steal one from the Yeerks later.”

“Easy for you to say,” Marco said. “You won’t even be here. You’re gadding off to your fiance, leaving us here to do the tough stuff.”

Rachel pressed her lips together. “Look, these are people Tobias knows. We’re not going to let them die.”

“I’m all in favor of not letting people die,” Marco said. “Especially myself. But these people have been there for a few days already, right? One more day, give or take, isn’t going to ruin or save anyone.”

“Marco might be right,” Jake said. “We have to look at this from a broader perspective.”

“We steal a Yeerk ship, we’re not going to be able to hang onto it for very long,” Marco said. “But we fix Ax’s ship, and we’ll have tech the Yeerks don’t understand and can’t easily hijack from us. You want to fight this war, you have to make some sacrifices.”

Rachel looked pissed off. Cassie looked worried. “We should at least try to get the Controllers in the dome ship out in the meantime,” Cassie said.

“What, so new people can be damaged?” Marco said. “These ones are already fucked. I say we cut our losses and just try to get in there as soon as possible.”

I didn’t stick around to hear any more. I spread my wings, flapped to catch a tailwind, and got away as fast as possible.


	12. Chapter 12

I cursed myself out as soon as I was out of sight of the meeting. Stupid, stupid. I was just making myself look like an idiot. What did I think, I was making some kind of point by leaving? That my leaving would make them think anything other than, _there goes that weirdo_? They might even be relieved. Now they could talk about their plans without worrying about my feelings.

I should probably have stayed and fought. That’s what Rachel had been doing, on my behalf. But she’d known the others for years. Jake was her cousin; Cassie was her college roommate. I was just the guy Jake used to give his spare change to sometimes.

I hadn’t even helped when Cassie had been shot at with a Dracon beam. I had saved my own ass, as if I was the important one here. Why would they listen to anything I had to say?

I flew around for a while, trying not to think, until it started getting too dark to see well. I knew I should go to my meadow, to the tree I’d slept in last night. But instead I found myself turning toward Rachel’s hotel.

She was staying in one of the big high-rise buildings downtown. I had been there often enough at this point that I could find her window without counting. I floated down to her balcony, riding the thermals of the cooling city, and landed on the railing.

The balcony door was already open. The light was on, and for a moment I just perched there, looking at Rachel.

She was sitting on the bed, looking at something on her phone. I had had a smartphone at one point. It was an old one someone had been getting rid of, but it had been too much trouble to keep it charged, and I didn’t have a data plan. After a while it got easier to just use the computers at the library and have one fewer thing someone might steal. After that I would sit on the sidewalks, watching people go by with their phones in their hands. Caught up in a world I couldn’t see.

I wondered what Rachel was doing on hers. Checking work email? Scrolling social media? Texting her fiancé?

I realized I was watching her without her knowing I was there. I fluttered toward the open door, and she looked up with a smile on her face.

“Hey. I was hoping you’d come by,” she said. Her smile dimmed. “Sorry about the meeting. That was bullshit.”

<It was okay.> I perched on the desk by the balcony door, where I could feel the night air.

“No, it wasn’t.” The anger was clear in her face. “Marco was out of line.”

<Well, yeah,> I said. <What else is new?>

She grimaced a little and shook her head. “It wasn’t okay. The rest of us shut him down pretty fast.”

<He was right, though,> I said. <Why does this group of people get be saved at the expense of another?>

“Because they’re your people,” she said.

The conviction in her voice was so compelling. But she was wrong. <They aren’t, though, really. I mean, I don’t know them. Not like you and Jake and Cassie and Marco know each other.>

“Doesn’t matter. They’re still yours.”

<Does _that_ matter, though?> I said. <Even if I didn’t know them. Shouldn’t their lives matter anyway?>

“Funny you should say that, when you were willing to throw your own away,” she snapped.

<What? I didn’t—>

“Today. When you dived at that guy in the HAZMAT suit.”

I hadn’t expected that. If anything, I’d expected her to be mad I hadn’t intervened sooner. <You were all in danger. I had to help you.>

“We would have figured it out,” she said. “We didn’t need you to risk exposing yourself.”

<I’m fine,> I said.

“You didn’t know that before you did it.” She was leaning forward, eyes intent on me. “We still don’t know it. You could have symptoms you don’t know about yet.”

It was hard, having her attention focused on me like that. It made me want to fly away. <It doesn’t matter anyway,> I muttered.

“Don’t be an idiot.” She straightened up. “Of _course_ it matters.”

<Not—not really. Not like…> I groped after what I meant. <I’m not Cassie.>

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

I remembered that scene in the forest: the way Jake had hovered over Cassie while we watched to see if her leg would grow back. The weight of his fear for her. It had felt like the most important thing in the world in that moment, that fear. <There’s no one who’s going to be upset if I get injured.>

“What about the rest of us? You don’t think we’ll be upset?” Rachel said. “Anyway, you just said it yourself: it shouldn’t matter if you matter to enough people or whatever. A person’s life matters no matter what.”

<Yeah, but I’m not exactly a person, am I?>

“Don’t you _ever_ say that,” she said, anger blazing out suddenly. “Of course you’re a person.”

I shifted my talons on the desk. <Rachel. I’m not even human anymore. I’m never going to be again.>

“We don’t know that,” she said. “And even if it’s true, that’s more reason to take care of this body, not less.”

I didn’t know how to explain it to her: how my body hadn’t mattered to anyone but me when I’d been human. How hard it is to care about your own body when no one else does. How doubly hard it is when that body feels like it belongs to the wrong gender. It didn’t give anyone else the right to take it away from me, but…it did make it easier when it slipped out of my grip.

I couldn’t figure out how to say any of that to her. Didn’t want to see how she would look at me if I did. <Have you decided when you’re going back?> I asked instead.

For a moment she looked like she wanted to fight the subject change. Then she let out a long, slow breath and looked away. “I don’t know,” she said. “My office keeps asking for a date. I can’t imagine walking away from this. But I also can’t imagine never going back. It’s my whole life, you know?”

I didn’t know. I’d never had a life it would have hurt to walk away from. <Sure.>

“My mom keeps telling me to stay. She’s always wanted me to move back here. I think she just doesn’t like Pierce.” She shook her head. “God, I don’t even _know_ what I’m going to tell him.”

<That sounds tough,> I said.

“Yeah.” She shook herself a little. “Sorry, I shouldn’t complain. Everyone is great, and they love me, they just…it’s just complicated.”

I wanted to ask more. I didn’t want to ask more. <I get it,> I said. <You have people you matter to.>

She shot me an anguished look. “Tobias—”

<I should get going.> I flapped for lift in the dead air of the room. <Find a nice cozy tree to perch in.>

“You can stay on the balcony if you want,” she said.

<Thanks,> I said, flying out onto the balcony. <But that’s not really what hawks do.>

“Hey,” she called after me. I stopped, alighting on the railing of the balcony again. “Mission leaves tomorrow morning from Ax’s ship.” She gave me a fleeting smile. “He found a faster way to crack the security program.”

<Great> Maybe slightly fewer people’s bodies would melt. <I’ll be there.>

“Oh, and Tobias?”

I looked back at her. She was outlined in the light from the room, her hair glowing with it.

“Whatever you think about the others,” she said. “Whether you think you matter to them or not. You matter to me. Okay? Remember that. There’ll always be someone who cares if you live or die, because I care.”

I couldn’t come up with any words to say to that. I looked at her for a long time, and then I turned and flew away.


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning, I caught myself some breakfast and made my way to Ax’s ship. I thought very briefly about not going, but that was stupid. However little I could do for Artie and Jeff and the others, it was better than nothing.

No one commented on my exit yesterday. Jake just explained the plan, and we headed out.

The plan wasn’t that complicated. Ax would morph a Controller, whoever we could nab before they went through the construction barrier, and go in seemingly alone. The others would do the bug thing again and switch to battle morphs in the trees around the dome. Once Ax had broken through Andalite security, he’d strip the parts he needed from the engine, and the others would run up and get them from him. Then Ax would set the self-destruct and open the dome’s emergency exits and everyone would scatter, running through the woods in their faster-than-human morphs.

It wasn’t subtle, as Marco pointed out. But as long as we acted faster than the Yeerks could react, we’d be okay. Or, as Marco said, “If we get our asses handed to us, let’s at least make sure they’re in takeout containers.”

I had a role, too, of course. I was supposed to watch from the sky.

We made our winged way across the city in the early-morning light, aiming for the sparkle of the Andalite Dome ship. It was there, just like before, orange trees standing out in the midst of green. And in the middle of it sat an uncloaked Yeerk Bug fighter.

We’d seen Bug fighters before. Two of them had landed in the construction site where Elfangor had lain injured, just before Visser Three landed his own Blade ship and morphed a terrible monster and used it to kill him. It had been dark, and we’d all been a little disoriented, but I could never forget the profile of those ships: their bulbous shape and bulging viewscreens, like the eyes of insects. The poisonous way they’d loomed over Elfangor’s body. Their spiky weapons that had vaporized his ship.

<So I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to be there,> Marco said.

<The engine mound is gone,> Jake said.

<Not gone,> I said. The Bug fighter was sitting near the center of the dome, next to the area that yesterday had been a grassy mound and today was a ripped-out space, a jagged hole that exposed the actual ground of Earth. But the grassy mound wasn’t gone. I could just see the edge of it through the open Bug fighter hatch.

<This is a trap, right?> Cassie said.

<It’s a trap,> Rachel confirmed. <I say we go in anyway.>

<Okay, do you even hear how disturbing those two statements are together?> Marco said.

<The Yeerks must have determined how to safely sever the engines from the rest of the ship’s network,> Ax said.

<Does that mean they’ve already gotten access?> Jake asked.

<Not necessarily,> Ax said. <Severing the engines from the rest of the dome is a relatively simple task that would require breaking only the first few layers of encryption. The engines themselves are better protected.>

<So we can still get what we’re after,> Cassie said.

<Um, excuse me?> Marco said. <Did you guys not hear the part where this is a trap? Not sure Ax having a ship is going to help us much when we’re all smears on the trunks of Andalite trees.>

<Don’t be such a wimp. They wouldn’t kill us,> Rachel said. <They would just capture us and infest us.>

<Oh, I feel so much better, thank you,> Marco said. <Yes, by all means, let’s offer ourselves up for that.>

<From what Ax said, it sounds like we can’t let the Yeerks take the engines for themselves,> Cassie said. <We have to do something.>

<The original plan should still work,> Jake said. <Ax can still morph one of the human-Controllers. They’ll have no reason to suspect him. And they didn’t notice the insect maneuver yesterday. We just have to get in and out before they realize we’re there.>

<So, just like before, except even more doomed to failure,> Marco said.

<You can always stay behind,> Rachel said coolly.

<Anyone can stay behind,> Jake said. <I don’t want to force anyone into a mission, especially one that might be a trap. If anyone wants to sit this one out, we’ll all understand your decision.>

There was a short silence as we floated high above the decapitated Dome ship.

<I hate you all,> Marco said finally. <Fine. I didn’t want to go to work tomorrow anyway. Let’s go give the Yeerks exactly what they’re waiting for.>


	14. Chapter 14

Step one was for Ax to land near the parking lot in front of the construction barrier and demorph so that he could acquire a human-Controller. The others landed with him, and Rachel and Marco went to battle morphs so that they could grab someone.

It took maybe ten minutes before a car pulled in. This one was loaded with three people, two of whom I vaguely recognized.

<Too many,> Jake said. <We won’t be able to keep them all tied up.>

<It makes sense that the Yeerks are housing them all together,> Cassie said. <If they don’t have homes of their own.>

<Probably don’t want to get their radiation or whatever on anyone else,> Marco said darkly.

The three Controllers made their way toward the barrier. Then one of them stopped and headed back to the car, like she’d forgotten something.

<We could go for this one,> Rachel said.

She and Marco were in the brush near the parking lot, waiting to pounce. I was of course doing my only job: circling overhead to make sure no one was coming.

I did a sweep of the parking lot before they could reach it. All clear. Except: <Wait!> I shouted.

Rachel and Marco froze, just shy of breaking into the clearing. <What?> Rachel said.

<Look at her arm,> I said.

She was maybe five hundred feet below me. A distance at which a human couldn’t have made out facial features. But my hawk eyes could pick it out clearly: the series of red, gaping sores running down her arm.

<Oh fuck,> Marco said.

<What? I can’t see,> Rachel said, sounding frustrated. Her grizzly vision was much worse than a human’s.

<Let’s just say this woman’s going to need a lot of retouching if she wants to keep that modeling career,> Marco said.

<We can’t take anyone with an obvious injury,> Jake said. <We won’t have it when we morph them. The Yeerks will notice that.>

We let the woman go to the car, get the bottle of water she’d forgotten, and go into the dome. I wondered how long she’d been working, and how long before the Yeerks decided to swap her body out. I didn’t know if I hoped, for her sake, that she had a lot of time left in the dome, or a little.

What was going to happen to these people if we managed to destroy the Dome ship engines today? Would we have saved them, or doomed them more quickly to whatever the Yeerks had planned for the bodies they didn’t plan to use anymore?

We only had to wait another five minutes or so before another car pulled in. This time the driver was alone, and if he had any distinguishing wounds, we couldn’t see them.

Rachel and Marco moved into position again. Marco took the lead. Rachel was backup, but we didn’t want the guy to see a grizzly and scream. When Marco approached him from behind and wrapped a giant hand around his mouth, he didn’t have a chance to scream.

<This new morph is great,> Marco said, as he used his gorilla arms to drag the guy into the forest. <Thanks, Cassie.>

<I don’t know about this,> Cassie said, sounding worried. <We’re kidnapping this guy and stealing his body.>

<He’s a Controller,> Rachel said.

<There’s a human there, too,> Cassie said. <And he’s the one whose DNA we’re taking.>

<Better us than 23andMe,> Marco said.

Ax stepped in front of the Controller, in his Andalite form. The guy started struggling harder. <Yeerk, we will be appropriating your human form,> Ax said. <If you do not struggle, we will not harm you. If you do, you will learn that we do not need your body to remain alive after we have acquired your DNA.>

The guy stopped struggling.

Ax acquired him, and the others took his outer clothing and left him tied up on the forest floor with the cord Rachel had carried. Then Ax morphed him, and the others jumped on in bug form.

So far, so good. Except for the obvious trap, of course.

Ax didn’t run into any trouble on his way into the dome. I hoped that was because no one noticed him, not because they were just waiting to spring their trap. <It appears to be largely unguarded,> he said. The woman with the sores was hanging out near the dome entrance, Dracon beam holstered, and the other two were visible inside the Bug fighter, doing something to the engine. Securing it for travel, maybe.

<Yeah, that’s what they want us to think,> Marco said. <Did I mention the fact that I really, really don’t like this?>

<Tobias, do a wider circle,> Jake said. <Let’s make sure there’s nothing else going on.>

I flapped for a bit more altitude and wheeled around to see the surrounding area. I didn’t see anything obviously out of place. I kept an eye out for the slight shimmer of cloaked ships, but nothing.

<I think everything is—hang on.> Movement. A truck, a few hundred yards from the dome. I could just hear the rumble of its engine starting up. The truck was heading away from the dome, on a road barely more substantial than a footpath. It was way too wide for the path; smallish trees crumpled under its front wheels and caught in its side-view mirrors, but it pushed ahead anyway. That probably wasn’t normal Sunday morning activity.

I drifted far enough to see in the side window. The driver’s face looked different than it had the last time I’d seen it: its nose was rotted away, leaving a painful-looking bump, and the skin was mottled with red. But it was still unmistakable. Artie.

There were a couple of explanations I could think of for what could be in that truck. But only one that seemed at all likely.

I turned faster than I’d ever turned before and shot back toward the Dome ship. <You guys! You have to get out of there! It is a trap!>

<Wow, Admiral Ackbar, do you think?> Marco said.

<No, a worse one than we thought,> I said. <Whatever’s on that Bug fighter, I don’t think it’s the Dome ship engines.>

<My examination has led me to the same conclusion,> Ax said. <I believe it may consist of a number of celluloid storage containers.>

<Those assholes,> Rachel said. <I can’t believe they thought they could fool us with cardboard boxes.>

<To be fair, they succeeded,> Marco said.

<Okay. Let’s get out of here as quickly and quietly as possible,> Jake said. <Ax, can you get out on your own?>

<Unfortunately not,> he said. <Several Hork-Bajir-Controllers have apprehended my human form.>

Jake spit out a curse. <Okay, we go rescue Ax,> he said. <But let’s be quick about it. We don’t want to be caught in here if—>

And that’s when the Dracon beams on the Bug fighter lit up. <Find cover!> I screamed, but it was too late. The beams spun in a circle, shooting bright-red beams at treetop-height, and turning the Andalite foliage into a ring of fire.


	15. Chapter 15

I was still flying back as fast as I could. It would have been faster if I could have dived, but I would have lost too much altitude. I was going to need that altitude if I was going to be able to do anything useful once I got there.

Their thought-speak shouting filled my head as I got closer, a horrifying narration of more than just a forest fire. <Rachel, watch out!> <Marco, they’re behind you!> <Jake, we could really use you over here!> And Ax’s voice, underlying everything, chanting words that sounded incongruously like a ritual: <We praise every leaf, we honor every twig, we listen for each individual voice…>

<Cassie, they’re on top of you!>

I got close enough to see that the five of them were fighting Hork-Bajir. I didn’t know where the Hork-Bajir had come from; I hadn’t seen any when we’d first approached. It was hard to imagine seven-foot lizard creatures covered entirely with blades doing a great job hiding in trees. But wherever they’d come from, there were at least a dozen of them now, backing the Animorphs into a tight ring as their potential cover burned to ash.

Rachel was fighting three of them at once, and holding on, but just barely. I identified my target: one of the three Hork-Bajir currently battling Rachel. As soon as I got close enough…

Just before I did, a new thought-speak voice filled my head.

<Ahaha,> it said. <You thought I was going to let you come in and steal my prize? You fools.>

One of the Hork-Bajir who had been hanging back was starting to change. Its blades were shrinking, its tail lengthening, its greenish skin turning blue. Visser Three.

Like I said, he’s the only Yeerk ever to have an Andalite body. But he’d be impossible to mistake regardless. His presence seems to carry with it a darkness that has nothing to do with his physical form. It’s a creeping feeling that something’s gone terribly wrong with the world. The feeling of despair. I could feel it even from hundreds of yards in the air.

<This technology will make the Yeerk empire even mightier,> he boasted. <It is a shame none of you Andalite bandits will survive to see it. Hah-hah!>

He regained his Andalite body and started to morph. Arms shot out of his shoulders, his back, his head, everywhere, stretching dozens of feet long. At the end of each arm grew a hand that was mostly a claw. Jake jumped on one of the arms, biting and tearing at its hand; Rachel swiped at one with her grizzly paws; Ax cut one hand off. But there were too many, and they were picking up Dracon beams from fallen Hork-Bajir. Soon there were dozens of weapons, all aimed at the snarling huddle of animals, the Hork-Bajir melting back so that nothing obstructed the Visser’s beams.

<That’s right, I’ve got you surrounded,> he said gleefully. <But don’t worry, I won’t kill you. I’ve promised the Councilor a chance to infest you. But don’t get me wrong: make a single move, and my intention might…become flexible.>

<Nobody move,> Jake said. He was staring the Visser in the face—the bloated, many-eyed face, like a gigantic spider’s. <Ax, is there anything you can morph that could take him out?>

<Yes,> Ax said. <But I would not be able to morph quickly enough to keep us from getting shot.>

It was a stalemate. They were all trapped, unable to move a muscle to save themselves.

All of them except me. But what could I do against a many-armed monster holding a dozen Dracon beams? I could rake its eyes, but I’d never get close enough to try, and even then it might just shoot on reflex.

If I didn’t have to get close, though…

I looked over at the main entrance to the dome. The human-Controller with the sores on her arm was still standing there, watching the action like it was the world’s best spectator sport. I got far enough to be out of the Visser’s line of sight and then dived.

The Controller was distracted enough that she didn’t see me coming until I was close. I flared my wings when I was just a few feet from her face, and she yelped and reached for her Dracon beam.

Just what I wanted. I changed course, closed my talons around the Dracon beam, and used my momentum to get back into the air.

Not as quickly as I would have liked. The Dracon beam was heavy. Hawks can carry nearly their own body weight, but not very far, and there was almost no lift over the dome. I kept a lot of the momentum from the dive, though, and managed to get a solid fifty yards above the Visser.

<Hey, Visser,> I said. I wanted his eyes off the Animorphs. <That’s a lot of eyes you have.>

He looked to the side. And to the other side. In a lot of directions, really, but not up. <You think to taunt me from your position of vulnerability?> he said.

Some of the Animorphs did look up. <Tobias,> Rachel said, <what are you—>

<Just be ready to fight,> I said. And then I pulled the trigger.

Dracon beams aren’t designed for hawks. But they are designed to be used by a lot of different species, which means their trigger mechanisms are pretty easy to pull. And fortunately they’re front-weighted so that it’s easy to let them point down. I situated myself directly above the Visser’s face, strained every muscle in my wings to maintain a hover, and fired.

I had aimed well. The beam hit the side of the Visser’s face. His scream made my head hurt, and his arms instinctively jerked. The Animorphs leaped into action at the same moment: they dove at the arms, under them, over them, and out of the circle of Dracon beams just as they fired.

<Yes!> I shouted, and let the Dracon beam fall. I had done it. Somehow I, the lone hawk, had defeated Visser Three.

<Great job, Tobias,> Jake said. <Now get out of here, everyone!>

I was only too happy to do so. I flapped my exhausted wings to get a little more altitude and aimed south.

Just as a door opened in midair and a net closed around me.


	16. Chapter 16

I instinctively beat my wings against the confinement. They hit painfully against the material bundled around me. I couldn’t see. No way out! Trapped!

The pain of my bruised wings cut through my panic, and I stopped flapping. The cloth fell away from my face.

I was on a ship. I took it in in a split second: steely gray surfaces, sleek-looking controls, a Taxxon in the corner, a few other humans around. And there, in front of me, a woman I’d seen before.

She was in a stylish blazer, her dark hair curving neatly under her chin. She was smiling down at me triumphantly. I had seen that smile before, too, just once: in the Yeerk pool, when she’d offered us the chance to give up our freedom forever and ally with the Yeerks. Lila, CEO of Jake and Marco’s company and the only Yeerk we’d seen who could give orders to Visser Three.

“Welcome to the Fang ship, Andalite,” she said.

<Tobias! What happened?> Rachel was shouting at me. Her thought-speak voice was faint; the ship I was in must be moving. I could feel the vibrations of the engine.

<There’s a truck,> I said to Rachel, as I stared up at Lila’s smile. <It’s driving north from the dome toward a cloaked ship. Artie’s driving—the guy we saw leaving the mobile clinic. It has the engines on it. You have to stop it before it gets to the highway.>

<We’re—can’t—>

Her thought-speak was too spotty for me to get the rest of the words. I hoped she’d gotten mine.

“Nothing to say?” Lila said. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

She picked me up. I was too tangled in the net they’d thrown at me to lash out at her, and anyway, what would be the point? I wasn’t going to be able to fight my way out of here.

Lila put me on the floor and pressed a button, and a clear glass panel slid from the ceiling to cut me off from the rest of the room. “Feel free to demorph,” she said, her voice muffled by the panel. “We’ve tested this material on those Andalite tails of yours. Tim’s Dracon beam will still be able to shoot through it, though, so don’t try anything tricky.”

The guy she called Tim was leaning against the far wall, wearing a t-shirt and shorts, like he was a random guy on a trip to the corner store. The Dracon beam pointing toward me was the only thing about him that wasn’t casual.

“You’re in luck, though,” Lila said to me. “I’m feeling grateful. You just won me my bet with Visser Three. He thought he’d be the one to capture one of the Andalite bandits first.” She grinned, sharp. “If you want to demorph and win me my bet that we’ll be able to get one of you to become a voluntary Controller…well, I’d be very, _very_ grateful.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to let her know that I was a human. Not that it mattered for me at this point. But I didn’t want to doom the others.

I wondered what she’d say if I told her I couldn’t demorph—that all she’d captured was a human _nothlit_. Would she still be able to infest me as a hawk? Probably not, or she wouldn’t be so insistent that I demorph.

“I’ll let you think about that for a while,” Lila said. “I think when your two-hour deadline is staring you in the face, you might be more amenable to the perks that can come with allying with a member of the Council of Thirteen.”

She walked away. Tim stared implacably at me.

It might be a good thing if he shot me, I realized. I couldn’t become a Controller, but that didn’t mean my future in Yeerk captivity would be bright.

It was a weird thing to come to terms with: that I was probably going to die in Yeerk hands, never to fly free again. And yet I couldn’t regret it. I had saved the others from Visser Three. I had told them where to find the Dome ship engines. It was more than I’d expected to be able to do. And soon the others would have a fully functional Andalite ship to provide the air surveillance I couldn’t offer anymore. I had left the resistance better than I’d found it.

I wondered, foolishly, if anyone would miss me. Lucy, maybe. I wished suddenly that I had tried to see her again, even if she wouldn’t have recognized me. She might not even realize I was gone.

Rachel would know. But Rachel had a fiancé and a life across the country to return to. I wasn’t anyone special to her.

“Take us to the Pool ship,” Lila snapped at the Taxxon pilot. “I have a prisoner to deliver.”

The Taxxon’s huge worm-like body quivered in its haste to obey. I felt the very slight jerk of changing acceleration.

And then a _BOOM_ as something shook the ship.

“What the fuck,” Lila said.

“Councilor, we’ve been shot,” said the copilot, an older woman wearing reading glasses.

“I realize we’ve been shot,” Lila said. “Pull up a viewscreen.”

The Taxxon pilot replied in its hissing language and pushed some controls. A panel appeared in the wall, like a huge TV, showing the blue sky with clouds. The view pivoted until we were looking at a Bug fighter.

“That’s fighter 428X,” Reading Glasses said. “The one that was on the ground in the Dome ship.”

“Councilor, news on the comm,” someone else said, a bearded guy with a headset. “The Andalite bandits have stolen the decoy Bug fighter.”

My whole body jerked. The other Animorphs had stolen the Bug fighter. To go after the engines?

“That idiot Visser Three,” Lila spat. “I told him his plan was too elaborate.”

“They’re headed for the transport truck,” Bearded Guy said. “No, they’re turning back toward us.”

“Fire on them,” Lila snapped.

The Bug fighter fired first. This time I saw the red beam lance from the other ship towards us. The ship shook so hard with the blow that I lost my footing and skidded across my enclosure.

“Shields at eighty-two percent, patchy in the upper northeast sector,” Reading Glasses said.

“All right.” Lila leaned forward, hands on the railing that separated the pilots’ seats from the rest of the bridge. “Let’s make these Andalites regret that they survived the battle for Earth.”


	17. Chapter 17

The Councilor’s crew hurried to carry out her orders. I stood behind my clear barrier, my head reeling: why were the other Animorphs doing this? They wouldn’t be able to get to the Dome ship engines in time if they kept fighting the Fang ship. Did they not understand that the Yeerks couldn’t infest me?

“Hey. Birdie.” Tim tapped on the glass. “Think your friends will be less motivated to shoot at us if we toss your corpse out the airlock?”

Lila swept by, grabbed the Dracon beam from his hand, and kept it aimed at me while she went on to stand at the railing. “We don’t need to throw his corpse out the airlock to deter these losers,” she said, turning to watch the viewscreen while keeping the Dracon trained on me. “Fire at will.”

I watched as the red beams of the Fang ship arced toward the Bug fighter and flinched when they hit. The shields seemed to be holding. But Reading Glasses kept shouting out shield percentages, which made me think the shields wouldn’t work indefinitely. And I was willing to bet the Bug fighter had inferior shields to whatever the Councilor was flying.

The Bug fighter was flying evasively, trying to avoid most of the shots—but “erratically” might have been a better word. “What do they think they’re accomplishing?” Lila demanded as the fighter shot straight up.

“Their shields can’t be at more than fifteen percent,” Bearded Guy said. “We’ll have them soon.”

“We can’t finish them while they’re above us,” Reading Glasses said.

“They can’t shoot at us, either,” Lila said, narrowing her eyes and sliding her gaze over to me. “What’s their game?”

I had no idea. If I’d been in charge of the Bug fighter, I would have sent it after the truck ages ago.

As if the other Animorphs had heard me, the Bug fighter suddenly turned and shot off to the north. The Fang ship shook with another impact, a parting blow.

It was the right thing to do, but I still felt an unexpected stab of hurt. Stupid—what had I expected, that they had totally abandoned the ship engines, just to rescue me? I knew better than that.

“Councilor, they’re heading to the transport truck,” Reading Glasses said.

“Can’t have that,” Lila said. She sounded almost lazy now. “Finish them off, Jerome.”

Bearded Guy—Jerome, apparently—turned back toward the weapons station. Before he could take a shot, the ship shook again, this time from an impact above us.

Lila turned her eyes to the ceiling. “That wasn’t a Dracon shot.”

“No shots fired,” Reading Glasses confirmed. “Could be debris.”

“Debris from what?” Lila asked.

“I’ve got a clear shot at the Bug fighter,” Jerome said. I felt the hum of our Dracon beams firing—just as the ceiling opened up and a grizzly bear fell on top of him.

Jerome went down like a sack of potatoes. The Taxxon reared up and screamed in its shrill voice. Reading Glasses dived under the copilot’s station. Lila swung her Dracon beam around to aim at the grizzly, but Rachel swiped at her with a massive paw and sent the Dracon beam skittering across the deck.

<Hi, Tobias,> Rachel said, turning to charge the Taxxon. <Glad to see you hanging in there.>

The Dracon beam slid across the deck and came to a stop at Tim’s feet. He picked it up.

<Look out!> I shouted, but Rachel didn’t need to worry. Tim had barely managed to point the Dracon beam at her before a big, thick, hairy arm shot down from the ceiling and took it from him.

<I’ll take that, thanks,> Marco said, thumping Tim on the head with a gorilla fist and swinging down to the deck. <Oh, hey, Tobias. Did you want to get out of here?>

<What are you guys even doing here?> I asked. <You should be going after the engines!>

<What engines?> he said. <Oh, yeah, the ones that might help us win the war. Funny thing: I decided I _didn’t_ want Rachel to kill me for letting you die. Hey, want me to get that for you?>

He used the beam to cut a square in the wall above my head. Unfortunately, the beam cut through the barrier and kept going to carve a square in the wall of the ship. A chunk of metal wall whooshed out with a rush of wind that swept me off my feet.

<Oops. Must have it on the wrong setting,> Marco said. He reached in a beefy arm and grabbed me in midair before I could be sucked out of the ship.

Meanwhile, Rachel was making mincemeat of the Taxxon. Jerome had revived from having a grizzly fall on him, but he was following Reading Glasses’ lead and hiding under the weapons station. “Get up, you idiot, and finish off the Bug fighter!” Lila shouted from where she was plastered against a bulkhead.

Rachel rounded on her. Which meant she wasn’t stopping Jerome as he got to his feet and staggered over to the weapon controls.

<That guy is going to shoot the others,> I said.

<Well, we can’t have that,> Marco said.

He loped toward Jerome and the weapons station. Unfortunately, that was when the older woman burst from underneath the copilot’s station, brandishing a crowbar in his face.

<Oh, come on, lady,> Marco said. She was only going to delay him a couple of seconds, but that would give Jerome enough time to get his shot off.

No one was watching me, though. The wind was bad: the air was still rushing out the gap in the ship’s wall behind me. But the length of a ship is nothing to a hawk. I powered across the ship toward Jerome.

He was taking aim at the Bug fighter as it hovered over the transport truck, which had stopped in the woods just shy of the highway. Jerome adjusted a joystick-type-thing and pushed a button, and I darted in and flapped my wings in his face.

“What the fuck!” he shouted, jerking back. “Freaking bird!”

The shot went awry—but not awry enough. I watched on the viewscreen as it clipped the side of the Bug fighter and sent it spinning.

My heart sank. They would never be able to get the engines now. The Yeerks would make off with them, and everything Ax had been worried about would happen. All because they’d been distracted by rescuing me.

Then, improbably, a beam lanced from the spinning Bug fighter. Despite the rotation, the beam shot straight toward the truck. The truck glowed red for a moment, and then it was just…gone. Vanished.

“Fucking hell!” Jerome shouted.

I knew I should say anything to him, but I couldn’t help it. <Ha,> I said.

And then, like a shadow of death, the Blade ship rose from the trees behind the Bug fighter.


	18. Chapter 18

We’d seen Visser Three’s Blade ship before. It had landed in the construction site the night Elfangor was killed. It had looked scary then: blacker even than the night around it, cut like a battle ax. Somehow, seeing it rise from a meadow in the bright sunlight, it looked even scarier.

Jerome rounded on me. “That’s the last time you interfere with my shot,” he said. He picked something up—another one of the nets they’d used to capture me.

I flew backwards, but the space was tight, and I didn’t have any momentum or lift. He was going to get me.

Until, that is, Rachel came rolling in and shoulder-checked the guy into the bulkhead. <Nice try,> she said. <Nobody messes with Tobias.>

<Rachel,> I said. <The Bug fighter.>

She squinted at the viewscreen. <I can’t see. What’s going on?>

The Bug fighter was starting to stabilize its flight. But the Blade ship was right on top of it. <The Blade ship. We have to shoot it, or—>

<Too late.> Marco slouched over, holding Reading Glasses by the wrists. He was wrapping the crowbar around them. <Gotta trust them.>

The Blade ship’s weapons lit up. Twin beams of red, straight toward the Bug fighter, and the ship burst into a ball of fire. <Noooo!> I shouted.

<No, look!> Marco said.

I followed his finger. There, on the screen, two spots moving away from the ship. Birds, flying away.

Only two, though. What about—

Rachel roared. At first I thought it was about the explosion, but then I saw that a door across the bridge had opened. Lila was there, with a Dracon beam in each hand.

“I think the three of you have caused enough trouble,” she said.

<Yeah, I’m not so sure about that,> Rachel said. <Marco, you wanna deal with her?>

Marco threw the Controller he was holding at Lila. At the same moment, Rachel turned and swung her massive claws through the metal hull of the ship, carving it open like a fish.

<They really ought to make these ships out of better materials,> Rachel said in grim satisfaction.

Marco barreled toward us. <Come on!> he shouted.

It was easy enough for me to let the rush of air pull me out of the hole in the hull. I resisted, though; what were the two of them going to do?

Jump, apparently. Marco wrapped his arms around Rachel, and the two of them fell out the hole in the ship.

<Morph!> I shouted, but they were too close to the ground. They wouldn’t have time. <You’re going to die!>

<What, you don’t think we came prepared?> Marco said. He pulled a cord on the backpack he still wore, and a parachute ballooned out and caught the air.

They instantly slowed. And started shrinking. A minute later, they were two humans clutching desperately to each other as they fell. “Don’t even say it,” Rachel shouted as she held onto Marco.

“Aw, I don’t need to,” he said. “It’s enough to know you need me.”

If Rachel hadn’t been hundreds of feet above the ground, I’m pretty sure, based on the expression on her face, that she would have let go right then.

I flew anxiously above them. The Fang ship was still above us. I could see it in patches: the hole Rachel had ripped in the hull, a couple of flashing places where the cloak was fading. Most of its crew was incapacitated, but that didn’t mean—

It was just luck that the Dracon beam missed me. I looked up to see Lila poking her head out through a hole in the hull. She looked furious. She shot again, and I dodged, but this time she wasn’t aiming at me. She was aiming at the huge white target of the parachute.

<Look out!> I shouted, diving toward them.

A third shot hit the white cushion and tore through it. I drew level with them in time to see two almost-birds tear loose of the harness and fall. <It’s all right! We’re all right!> Rachel said.

<Speak for yourself,> Marco said.

They were both falling toward the treetops, not quite bird enough to fly. As I watched, though, their wings took shape, and they spread them just in time to skim over the trees, first Rachel’s eagle and then Marco’s harrier.

I was shaking. Too much flying, too much fear. I couldn’t stop yet, though. <The Bug fighter,> I said, powering toward the site of the explosion.

<Yeah, that sucked,> Rachel said. <Would have been great to hang onto that one.>

<No, I mean.> Maybe I’d seen it wrong? My eyes didn’t do well with screens. I’d been so sure, though. <There were only two birds.>

<What? Oh,> Marco said. <Yeah, that was Cassie and Ax. Jake jumped off way earlier.>

<He went to get the guy from the truck,> Rachel said. <Artie, right?>

<What? Why did he…>

<We figured out we were going to have to blow it up,> Rachel said. <Couldn’t leave him there to die.>

It was too much. I let myself sink beneath the tree cover and found a branch to sit on.

<Tobias!> Rachel shouted. I heard her coming after me.

<I’m okay,> I said faintly. I was pretty sure I was, anyway.

Rachel landed on the branch with me and tried to—well. Birds don’t really snuggle. But I appreciated the thought. Even if she was five times bigger than I was, and it made the hawk want to flee a little bit.

Marco landed on a branch across from us. <Good, you’re okay. Wouldn’t have wanted all that effort to go to waste.>

<Why did you guys even come?> I said. <You could have gotten the Dome ship engines.>

<You were captured,> Rachel said. <Of course we were going to come.>

<Yeah, but they wouldn’t have gotten anything out of me,> I said. <I mean…>

I tried to come up a way to put it into words that wouldn’t sound pathetic or self-pitying. Or ungrateful. It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted to be rescued. I just wouldn’t have expected them to do it.

<Wow, dude,> Marco said. <I’m insulted.>

<Why?> Rachel said, a dangerous edge to her voice, like she thought maybe he was about to be offensive.

<You actually thought we wouldn’t come rescue you,> Marco said. <Like the only reason we’d help you out is if we thought you were about to give us up to the Yeerks.>

<What, seriously?> Rachel said, rounding on me. <That’s ridiculous.>

<No, that’s not it,> I said, even though it sort of was. <I just…I knew how much Ax needed those engine parts.>

<Yeah, it was probably a dumb decision,> Marco said. <But this whole fight is a pretty dumb decision. The way I see it, none of us have any business being in it at all. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stand back and let one of the rest of you get fucked by it.>

<We’ll never let the Yeerks take you,> Rachel said, in that voice of hers that doesn’t allow for any argument. <Or any of us. We’re a team. We fight together, or we die together.>

<Pretty sure it’ll be that second one,> Marco said. <But yeah, what she said. You’re on the team, man.>

There was nothing I could say that would express my reaction to that. But I hoped they understood anyway.


	19. Chapter 19

“So,” Marco said the next day, as we watched Cassie hook harnesses up to Jake and Rachel. “You think these two have finally achieved their natural forms? I don’t know, might still be too small for Rachel.”

<That is incorrect,> Ax said. <Clearly their natural forms are human.>

“And this is why we keep you around, for that valuable perspective,” Marco said.

Rachel tossed her trunk. Her huge ears flapped in the breeze as Cassie fastened the buckles on her back.

<I don’t know,> I said. <I think there might be a natural affinity.>

Lucy barked a warning at them, pulling at the leash in Marco’s hand.

She had come with Jake and Cassie. She had been having a great time running around the gravel pit, until the elephants had made an appearance. We figured it was probably better to leash her at that point.

She didn’t know me, and didn’t seem to understand when I talked to her in thought-speak. But it was great to see her again.

<I believe the harnesses are complete,> Ax said.

Jake and Rachel started to move. I was skeptical that they’d be able to: Ax’s ship looked impossibly huge, a solid lump of metal. But Jake and Rachel put their shoulders to it, and it started sliding across the rocks.

Cassie came across the pit toward us, brushing her hands off. “That ought to be good for a few tons of pull,” she said, settling next to us to watch.

“If you say so,” Marco said. “I missed out on the do-your-own elephant bondage playset when I was little. I mean, I asked for it, obviously, but Santa just didn’t come through.”

Cassie gave him a polite grin. Then she turned to me with a real smile. “I’m glad you’re okay, Tobias.”

Was I okay? I guess I was. I was alive, anyway, and no one seemed to be blaming me for what had happened with the Dome ship engines.

I had apologized to Ax, after we’d all met up. He had told me not to worry about it, that an Andalite prince is naturally suited to bear up under adversity. I wasn’t sure how much to take that at face value. Ax was still pretty much a mystery to me.

Not the only one. I still didn’t understand why the others had rescued me. They all seemed to think it was obvious, and I’d decided not to question it too hard. I just hoped they didn’t end up regretting it.

“You sure the Yeerks won’t be able to find your ship in this cave?” Marco asked Ax. “I mean, rock. That seems pretty low-tech as far as you guys and your fancy gadgets go.”

<I have tested your Earth granite extensively,> Ax said. <The thickness in question should be sufficient.>

“Wow, Ax,” Marco said, shaking his head in mock astonishment. “Geologist, crack shot, ship technician. Is there anything you can’t do?”

<My training is standard for an Andalite prince,> Ax said modestly.

Rachel and Jake inched the ship across the gravel toward the cave Ax had carved out with one of the handheld shredders from his ship. They disappeared inside the cave, dragging the ship after them, and a minute later two humans slipped past the ship and back into the sunlight.

Jake and Cassie had brought their car here, despite the greater risk of it being traced, so that they could transport the harnesses. It meant that Lucy could come, and it also meant that after Jake and Rachel demorphed, we all got to sit inside the mouth of the cave—those of us who could sit—and have a picnic dinner.

It was a little surreal. Four humans, an alien, a dog, and a bird sitting on a lip of rock in front of a spaceship. I could have left at that point; it wasn’t like I could eat any of the food. But I stayed and hung out with the others. My team, apparently.

Rachel was raving about the elephant experience. “Man, that was a rush,” she said. “I thought being a grizzly was great, but wow. That thing has _power_.”

“Here we go,” Marco said. “Brace yourselves for an elephant rampaging through the streets.”

Rachel grinned toothily at him.

“Oh hey, did I tell you guys what happened with the guy from the truck?” Jake asked.

“Artie?” Cassie said.

“Yeah, him. I scared him out of the truck pretty easy, but I wasn’t sure what to do with him next,” Jake said. “I couldn’t really tie him up as a leopard, you know? And I didn’t want him to go back into the truck if we were about to blow it up.”

“Good thought,” Marco said.

“So I was thinking I would chase him into the woods or whatever, when this other guy showed up,” Jake said. “Really tall, kind of built, but his face was really damaged. Like, the whole left side was just rotted away.”

I went still.

“He takes Artie away from me,” Jake went on. “Just grabs him, like I wasn’t sitting there as a leopard with the potential to maul him. And Artie’s fighting him, right, he’s a Controller, he doesn’t want to go with this guy. But the guy just throws him over his shoulder, looks straight at me, and says, ‘You can’t have him anymore.’ Then he disappears into the woods. Totally gone.”

“Wow,” Rachel said. “Good for him.”

“You think that was a legit rescue?” Marco asked.

Jake shrugged. “If not, I don’t know what it was.”

“Maybe some of the people the Yeerks tried to get rid of escaped,” Cassie said thoughtfully. “If the Yeerks were done with them, they might not have been paying enough attention. Maybe they’ll have a chance.”

“Or maybe the Yeerks will track them down and wipe them out,” Marco said.

“Maybe,” Jake said. “But this guy seemed pretty determined.”

I wasn’t sure what to believe. Half of me suspected that Jake had made up the story just to make me feel better about what had happened to Artie. But I hadn’t told anyone which side of Jeff’s face was damaged.

I wanted to believe it was true. I wasn’t used to choosing the hopeful thing. But maybe I could, this time.

The lunch broke up pretty soon after that. Jake and Cassie carried trash to their car, and Ax went to inspect his ship, and Marco stayed—maybe to learn something about Andalite engineering, or maybe just to mock him.

Rachel wandered away a little and stood in the middle of the gravel pit, hand on her hip, letting Lucy run around on the leash. I fluttered down to perch on a mound of gravel near her.

<So,> I said. <I hear you’re going back.>

She nodded. “In a few days. My boss is getting antsy, and I can’t keep putting Pierce off. I’m going to have to tell him.”

<How do you think he’ll take it?>

She laughed. “Knowing Pierce? He’s going to spend three days researching alien invasions and then establish conclusively that this one isn’t happening.”

I thought about commenting on that. Didn’t. <Think you’ll be back?>

She hesitated. “I can’t imagine abandoning the fight,” she said. “But the life I have over there…I don’t know. I really don’t know, Tobias.”

She wasn’t asking for my opinion. I didn’t have the right to give it to her. It was inconceivable that I would tell her what to do. But all of a sudden I wanted to. I wanted to tell her to stay.

I bit down on the impulse. What I wanted had nothing to do with what she was going to do. <You’ll make it work either way.>

“I hope so.” She reached a hand down as Lucy romped up to her. “Promise me something,” she said, scratching behind Lucy’s ears.

<What?>

She looked at me, squinting in the bright sunlight. “I know I might not be here,” she said. “But promise me you won’t forget there’s someone out there who cares what happens to you. Don’t let yourself stop caring about it, okay?”

I’ve never been good at moments like that. Haven’t had a lot of practice, I guess. But Rachel was leaving soon, and I didn’t want to leave her with nothing. <Yeah,> I said. <Yeah, I promise.>

“Good,” she said, and together, we watched Lucy romp in the sunshine.


End file.
